Broken Strings
by ThePoeticWeirdo
Summary: It's a party place, a safe place where children play. But that isn't what it is to some. By the time the children realize this, it's too late. (In retrospect, it might be safer to rate this M due to the violence and tragedy it has.)
1. Chapter 1

**Warning: This will probably get dark. Sorry. Just a note: I do not own the game**

Nathaniel stared through the window into Fredbear's. Kids were running around and eating pizza and playing. A bird that had accidentally flown into the diner fluttered about overhead. Nathaniel watched the scene for a few minutes. It was a nice place, for kids at least, but it was time to go home; thirteen years old meant some degree of freedom, but he didn't want to push it and receive a lecture from his parents about being irresponsible.

He turned the corner to walk behind the diner, a shortcut he often took, and tripped. _Darn shoelaces!_ he thought, sitting down to tie them back up. A car pulled up and an older teen got out. "Hey kid, quit loitering! You better not be vandalizing anything," he shouted at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel rolled his eyes. He knew that man's type: a rude jerk who thought he owned the world. The best way to deal with people like that was to just leave. "Ok ok I'm going. Gee," he said.

"Yeah you bet you're going," the man stomped forward. Nathaniel stood up, not expecting the man to be quite so aggressive. He didn't get up fast enough. The man pushed him and he fell. Nathaniel was afraid now. "I've had to chase away too many dumb, disrespectful, vandalizing kids like you, you hear me? Get out," the man warned.

Shaking, Nathaniel got up. Sure as heck he wasn't going to come back after this. His shoelace still untied, he headed towards the main street. No shortcut today. Childish but defiantly, he stuck his tongue out as he walked past the man. Just barely did he have time to notice the man lunge at him. There was a sharp pain at his back and his scream was muffled by the hand covering his mouth. His vision blurred and he gasped, falling to the ground. He tried to scream again but all he accomplished was making a strangled, choking sound. Warm blood came out with it, splashing against his upturned face. "Stupid kids," the man muttered with contempt as he bent down and wiped the knife on Nathaniel's shirt. He gave the boy a kick and folded the knife back down into its sheathed position.

The world became fuzzy as Nathaniel gave another choked gasp, shallower than the last. With effort, he turned his head. Warm blood was pooling around him. As everything faded, the last thing Nathaniel saw was his murderer calmly walking back to his car.


	2. Chapter 2

Nathaniel blinked a couple of times. He was standing on an empty street outside the diner. The moon shone like an eye in the dark sky. But hadn't it just been the afternoon? And hadn't that guy just... Shaking his head, he tried to clear it. How had he gotten here and more importantly, what the heck had just happened to him?

A man in an official-looking uniform jogged past Nathaniel and around the corner of the building. A policeman. Nathaniel knew that the cops wouldn't be happy to see the young teen out past curfew, but he desperately wanted to know what in the world had just happened to him. "Hey! Sir!" he called, taking off after the policeman.

When Nathaniel rounded the corner of the building, he found the policeman taking notes along with two other grim-faced officers. The men were standing next to a roped off area. The place looked like a murder scene. His murder scene.

 _This can't be happening. This can't be happening,_ Nathaniel tried to tell himself. But he knew that the truth was in front of him. One of the policemen turned to look at the empty diner. Nathaniel was in his direct line of sight, but the man looked right past him. "This is really happening," the young teen told himself out loud. The policeman didn't acknowledge that he had spoken.

Feeling sick, Nathaniel knew he couldn't stay at the scene of his own murder for one more second. He turned around and fled into the diner. The solid wall did nothing to bar the ghost from going through it.

It was a lot quieter inside. Up on the stage, the Fredbear robot and his rabbit companion waited motionlessly for the day to start. Nathaniel looked down. In a corner sat a Fredbear plush toy, left behind by some child. Nathaniel went to pick it up. His hands passed right through it.

Something else caught Nathaniel's eye. The bird, which had flown so franticly around the diner the day before, lay next to the toy bear. From a crash or exhaustion or maybe some other reason, it, too, was no longer a part of this world.

Nathaniel felt sorry for the little creature. Now that he was less panicked, the harsh reality was really starting to set in. Was death really such a big part of life?

Softly, a weak purple light began to glow around Nathaniel's hands. The motionless bird took up a glow of its own, as did the Fredbear plush. As quickly as it had come, the light faded. Amazed, Nathaniel watched the toy raise its head and somewhat awkwardly move its arms. It stood up and began to hop around, fluttering its stuffed arms wildly. _Did I make that happen_ , Nathaniel wondered in awe.

He felt even worse for the bird now. Trapped in its new body, it could do nothing but hop around, grounded. He tried to pick it up again, thinking he might be able to calm it, but his hand passed through it once again. _I didn't mean to make it suffer. It was probably happier in whatever place I called it back from_ , Nathaniel thought sadly.

The purple glow returned. This time, the bear gave a shudder and went limp. He looked down at his transparent hands. _What the heck is happening to me?_


	3. Chapter 3

Two days later, with the problem outside cleaned up and the customers assured that Fazbear entertainment had had nothing to do with it, the diner opened. Business doesn't sleep. Just like the policemen the night before, nobody seemed to see or hear Nathaniel, and everything went through him as if he was air. It was freaky and depressing at first, but he got used to it after a while. It wasn't so bad to be this way, he tried to make himself believe. After all, he could go wherever he pleased now and that was pretty nice. Of course, nothing he did could stop himself from thinking about his parents and friends or the fact that his murderer hadn't been caught.

The bell at the diner's door dinged and Nathaniel casually glanced over to see who was coming or leaving. A teenage boy walked in with a young child trailing behind him meekly.

All of a sudden, the little boy rushed forward, running through Nathaniel in the process. The boy picked up the Fredbear plush that the bird had so recently possessed and squeezed it in delight. "There you are! I thought I'd lost you!" he squealed happily. The teen snorted and the little boy flinched.

Nathaniel hadn't seen the last of the two boys. They came to the diner nearly every day, arriving after school and leaving at closing time. How the brothers were allowed to come every day without ever attending a party would have mystified the ghost had he not heard the teenager, Henry, smugly address his owner as "dad" as often as he could in front of customers. As the days wore on and Nathaniel realized that the case of his murder must have gone cold, he got bored and took to watching the two boys. He felt like he was getting to know them. Henry always seemed to be snapping his younger brother. Nathaniel knew that little brothers could be annoying, a fact his friends had complained of frequently, but the kid wasn't that bad. Sure, he was a little annoying, but wasn't everybody like that from time to time. He certainly didn't seem to deserve all the cruel pranks his older brother played on him.

Timothy, on the other hand, was perhaps too shy for a kid his age, unless he was alone with his stuffed animals. He had a toy for each of the characters that would be at his father's new, larger pizzeria that was going to open once he sold Fredbear's. The kid brought one or two of them to the diner every day, hiding them in his coat pockets and taking them out for a comforting hug whenever he needed one. Usually that was when he was hiding underneath a table to get away from Henry.

Even though Timothy was terrified into hysteria of the full-sized version of the bear, he especially loved the Fredbear plush. The child carried it with him wherever he went and treated it like a friend: confiding little secrets to it, wearing its fur down with too many hugs, setting aside a portion of his pizza for it to eat (though of course it never took the offer). Nathaniel was pretty sure that Timothy believed that the stuffed animals were real. Maybe it was for the best, because nobody else his age ever played with him. He didn't seem intent on making any friends though. The plushes provided all the companionship he needed, though their friendship couldn't come close to what a real person could offer. Nathaniel found himself wishing that Timothy was his little brother instead of Henry's. He imagined himself teaching the kid sports, helping him with a difficult homework problem, watching him play with his friends' younger brothers…

That got him remembering his own friends, and how they would hang out after school and laugh and get into trouble and talk about their plans for ruling high school. Those plans would never go anywhere now. He'd never see his friends, never go to high school, never get a girlfriend. He felt a tear fall and watched it disappear when it hit the ground.


	4. Chapter 4

**I can't stand a story that is all sad and nothing else. I don't want this story to be depressing and have nothing happy in it. As it is, this chapter is pretty upsetting, but I am working to finish the next chapter, which will be much nicer. Hopefully it will be done by tomorrow, as I have free time to type on the weekends. I don't think I said it before, but I appreciate that you readers have taken time to review this story and give me feedback. Really, it means a lot to me so thank you.**

Timothy was turning nine. Fredbear's had been sold, but it wasn't going to officially close and have the new company start moving in until Sunday. Saturday was Timothy's birthday party.

Timothy didn't seem excited about it, though. Nathaniel didn't blame him. It was as if Henry had a yearly quota of torturing his brother that he was rushing to fill. Watching him was awful, but Nathaniel felt that not being able to do anything to stop Henry was worse.

It was almost the day of the party. Nathaniel was aimlessly floating around the storage room, bored. Suddenly, the door opened. Henry shoved his brother into the room. Going through the wall, Nathaniel saw the older boy lock the door with a set of keys he had probably taken from his father's office. Then he sat down at a table next to the door and covered his ears to the screams. After a moment, he threw his hands up, stood up from his seat, gave the storage room's door a kick, and then walked away looking immensely annoyed. Nathaniel wanted nothing more than to smack him across the face, but he knew he'd just phase right through, unnoticed.

Instead, Nathaniel went back through the wall into the storage room. Timothy was curled up by the door, squeezing his favorite plush and crying. "Fredbear is my friend. Tomorrow is another day. Fredbear is my friend. Tomorrow is another day," he whispered to himself over and over, as if saying those words would make bring him comfort. Nathaniel sat down next to him. Just as he couldn't hurt Henry, he could do nothing to make Timothy feel better.

"You're going to be fine. That Henry, he'll get what he deserves. It won't always be this bad," he said, though he knew his words wouldn't do anything to help. He sat there for a while. Timothy had stopped crying. He glanced over. The little boy was fast asleep. _At least_ , thought Nathaniel, _nothing can torment him while he's resting._ Perhaps it was better that Nathaniel didn't know about the nightmares.

* * *

Nathaniel watched Timothy draw a picture of Fredbear on a flower. It was a little bit strange, but Timothy didn't seem to want anything to do with the other children. His guests, all the kids from his class, didn't show any signs of wanting to play with him, either.

Unable to pull out a chair, Nathaniel sat down on the table. Timothy looked genuinely happy, a rare sight. He smiled at the younger boy. He hoped the kid turned out ok.

Nathaniel looked up. Across the room, Henry and a group of other teens were talking and pointing at Timothy. They were all wearing crudely made masks of the Freddy's characters. "Come on, kid, turn around. Get out of here. I think there's going to be trouble," Nathaniel warned Timothy, knowing it would do nothing to help. The little boy kept drawing happily, completely unaware of his danger. Nathaniel watched the nightmare unfold.

Timothy kicked and screamed, his head caught in Fredbear's mouth. Henry and his friends laughed. The party guests played on, oblivious to any trouble. Their talking and laughter helped drown out the trapped boy's screams.

"Somebody help this kid!" shouted Nathaniel. Where were parents at a time like this? "Please! Come on, is there anybody who cares?! Just get this kid away from that monster!" And Fredbear granted his wish.

The older boys stopped laughing. The partying children continued playing, completely unaware of what had just happened. But there was one moment of dead, horrified silence among Henry and his friends. Then one of them screamed and jumped on stage to pry Fredbear's jaws open. Timothy fell out, limp and covered in blood. "Don't be dead, kid, please don't be dead. Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh I'm sorry I didn't mean it I'm sorry. Please don't be dead I didn't wish for you to die," Nathaniel cried. The purple glow appeared around his hands. It appeared around Timothy and Fredbear. "No! I can't do that again!" he shouted, remembering how the bird he had resurrected had flapped its unfamiliar arms, trapped in an unwieldy body. He couldn't imagine Timothy going through the same thing, not after what he'd already been through. The glow didn't disappear, but it lessened.

The place had cleared. The ambulance had come and gone and Fredbear was off being cleaned. Nathaniel had tried to chase after it to see what would become of poor Timothy, but it zoomed well ahead of him. Soon it had disappeared from his sight and he could no longer hear its sirens. Tears in his eyes, he made his way back to the diner. Timothy hadn't known that the other boy had existed, but for Nathaniel, it was as if a bright piece of the world was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**This chapter is being reposted due to an issue that I thank a reviewer for finding. I will now check what I copy and paste over from my text editor to this site and hopefully it will not happen again. I would like to thank this reviewer for bringing this to my attention.**

He found Timothy standing next to the stage, looking confused and frightened. He kept glancing down at his hands, constantly being reminded that he had no plush toy to comfort him. _Thank goodness he doesn't look too bad off_ , Nathaniel thought. "Timothy, I know you're probably freaked out, but you're going to be ok," he called, stepping towards the boy.

Timothy took a step back. "W-What's happening to me? How do you know my name?" he stammered.

Nathaniel stopped. He realized that he knew a lot about Timothy but the little boy had no idea that he even existed. "Um, there's kind of a lot to explain," he started. Timothy stared at him. "So, um, you're a ghost now. So am I. I'm Nathaniel, by the way."

"This isn't just another nightmare," the boy sniffled, "I was hoping it was, but it isn't." He sat down on the stage and sobs shook his little body.

 _He has a pretty good reason to be crying this time_ , Nate thought to himself. Having your own brother be the one responsible for you being dead and then finding yourself in your father's restaurant with no explanation to what was going on would shake up anybody.

"Hey, it's not so bad," Nathaniel tried, sitting down next to him. "I mean, you can go anywhere you like and you can't get hurt. That's not so bad, right?"

Timothy sniffled again and wiped away a tear. "I guess," he sighed, "I just kind of expected it to be a little different." He looked up at the ceiling and more tears began to flow. "I thought it'd be more like Mommy said it would and I'd get to see Grandpa and Grandma again, not get stuck in this stupid diner."

Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. "I think you'll see them someday," he finally said, "Maybe we just need to spend more time here and then we'll be able to, you know, move on."

The two sat in silence for some time. Nathaniel got up and stretched. He did a handstand and earned a smile from Timothy. The little boy looked at the stage behind him. "I thought Fredbear was my friend," he muttered.

Nathaniel put a transparent arm around the child. Surprisingly, it did not pass through the other ghost. "Hey, Timmy, he can't hurt you now. We're both here now, and I'm not going to let anything hurt you, ok?" Timothy gave an obliging sniffle and the two watched the sunrise.

"So, what now?" asked Timothy. In all the excitement, Nathaniel had nearly forgotten that Fredbear's was closing the day after the party. Men moved in and out of the diner, unaware of the presence of the two ghosts. Tragedy or no, business never sleeps.

"Do you have anywhere you've always wanted to go?" asked Nathaniel.

Timothy thought for a moment. "I guess I've only ever known this neighborhood. I'd miss it if I went anywhere else." He paused to watch the men carrying a table into their truck. "Do you think we could go to my dad's new restaurant?" he finally asked.

Nathaniel had seen the posters outside the diner that advertised the new Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. He'd memorized the address on them and was grateful for the endless hours of exploring the streets with his friends and paying attention to street names every car ride so he would know where to go when he finally got his driver's license, another thing he'd never be able to experience. All that had paid off as he now knew the neighborhood so well, it was as if he had a map in his head. The pizzeria's address was a little outside his super-familiar zone, but he was sure he could get them there. "Ok, Timmy," he grinned, "If that's where you want to go, that's where we'll go."


	6. Chapter 6

"I told you I'd get us to Freddy's," said Nathaniel as he gazed up at the huge building.

"Yeah, but only after we wandered around for two hours," Timothy elbowed him. He sighed and let a smile show. "At least we're here."

"This place is huge," Timothy said in awe. "I wish I could have come here without being…" his voice trailed off.

"Aw come on, don't be sad. There's lots of cool things we can do now," Nathaniel reassured him. The older boy didn't feel confident or assured himself, but he couldn't bear to see Timothy cry anymore. "Hey, let's go inside."

The first thing the pair noticed was the three animatronics on the stage. "They're like giant versions of my toys!" Timmy jumped up and down with excitement. "I want to see them up close! Can I? Can I?" He pulled his companion up to the stage, too excited to care that they were walking through several people.

Nathaniel chuckled to himself, watching Timothy float up and try to climb on top of the singing robots. He couldn't help but think how lucky they were that they couldn't be seen, because owner's son or not, Timothy would definitely not have been allowed to do this in front of all the men setting up.

Suddenly, Nathaniel became aware that his little friend was no longer laughing. He looked over to see Timothy staring at something in the front of the room. The owner, his father, was standing by the entrance.

As if in a trance, Timothy walked over to the man. "Dad?" he asked quietly. The man kept talking to the employee he was with. Talking about being sorry for his loss. "Daddy? Please don't cry, Daddy! I'm right here! Please, just look over at me! I'm right here!" The little boy was becoming more and more frantic as his father continued to not notice him.

Nathaniel winced. He hadn't sought out his family or friends after he had died, precisely to avoid this. He couldn't think about them without crying, and he couldn't bare to face their sadness over him.

Timothy was practically screaming now. With a heavy heart, Nathaniel walked over to the boy and took his hand. "No! I have to tell him I'm here!" the child cried, breaking free. He sprinted after his father even after the man got into his car and began to drive. Nathaniel felt a pain in his chest. His friend was going to get lost if he tried to follow the car. He took off after his friend, catching him easily.

"There's nothing we can do for him," he told his distressed friend. The boy kept struggling, still trying to chase after the car that had long since disappeared. "There's nothing we can do." Timothy was screaming, completely beyond reason. Frustrated, Nathaniel grabbed the child's other arm and shook him. "There's nothing we can do for him! He can't see us, he can't hear us, and he can't touch us! There's no way for us to let him know that we exist! There's no way for us to let him, or your mom, or your brother, or my parents, or my friends, or anybody know that we still exist! Understand?!" Nathaniel didn't even notice the tears streaming down his own cheeks. Letting go of the boy's hands, he sank down on the curb and let himself cry. Nobody would ever find out that they still existed.

He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry for screaming," sniffled Timothy. Nathaniel looked up at his friend with guilt. Timothy shouldn't be apologizing. None of this was his fault. He didn't deserve to have to watch his own father come in every day and never be able to give him any sign that he was standing right next to him. Nathaniel wanted with all his heart to do something to make his friend feel better, but he had no power to do anything.

"Look," he pointed at the sky as Timothy sat down next to him. Timothy looked up. "See those stars?" Timothy nodded slowly. "Yeah, those stars up there, they're special. You can tell them anything, and they'll listen. They're always watching out for you, so nothing can ever be completely hopeless." That was the only thing Nathaniel could come up with to say, but it sounded sweet. "Those stars, I used to think that's where we go when we pass on. Up there, so high above everything, that's where we're supposed to go. Up there, nothing can make you sad. It'll just be you and me and all the rest of the stars, forever and ever." A few times, he had considered trying to float all the way up to the sky, but he knew it was too far away. Besides, stars were just giant balls of fire, trillions of miles away from Earth and each other, not some warm childhood fantasy place.

"That's where I've always thought Grandma and Grandpa were," Timothy said quietly. "Henry told me I was being stupid, but I still believed it. I know he misses them, too. Do you think we'll ever get to the stars?"

Nathaniel stared up at the sky. The stars were so far away. He didn't know why he and Timmy were still in the world, or where they were supposed to be, or how to get to that place. "I think we will," he finally said, "I know we will. I know we'll get there, someday. I think we just have to stay here a little longer."

"Just a little longer," Timmy echoed. He continued to stare at the stars. More and more were coming out as the moon rose.

Ghosts didn't need sleep, but it felt wrong to be out so late. "Come on, Timmy. Let's go back," he said, standing up. The little boy broke out of his trance and nodded. He took Nathaniel's hand and the pair walked back to the pizzeria.


	7. Chapter 7

After a while, Nathaniel lost track of how long he and Timothy had stayed at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. Every day was like the one before it. The same songs were sung, the same employees came. Had he and Timothy been able to grow up, however, he would have seen definite proof of how much time had really passed.

Nathaniel was watching Timothy imitate Freddy's movements, singing along with the bear, when the front door opened. Casually, he glanced over and did a double take. "Henry?" Timothy whispered. The boy had taken to hiding away whenever he saw his father so he would not have to face his sadness, even though the man had long since stopped his grieving. For this, however, the boy stayed where he was. "Henry?" he asked again.

The teen was visibly older than he had been the last time the two ghosts had seen him. He was looking over at the stage with a smile, and holding his hand was a little girl about four years old. The two were pointing and laughing, and the girl was holding a stuffed fox toy in one hand. "Stay here and watch Freddy," Henry told the girl, twirling her around once before sitting her down at one of the tables. "I need to go tell Daddy we're here."

"Can I tell people that Daddy owns Freddy's?" asked the happy toddler.

"Remember what he says about talking to strangers?" The girl pouted. "Hey, I'll only be gone for a moment, Katie. Be a good girl and play with Vixie and when I come back, we can go do something fun. If you're extra good, I'll even get you a big, cheesy pizza." Henry ruffled her hair and she giggled.

Timothy watched the scene, mouth open in surprise. "Henry's an adult," he finally said, sitting down on the table, "And he seems nicer." The ghost child stared at the girl. "Katie. Mom was going to have a baby girl and we were going to name her Katie. I remember how we were getting her room ready. It had a picture of a flower hanging on the wall, and I even put my girl fox toy on the floor so she could have something to play with. Dad…he bought the crib just a few days before my party and we were going to set it up after things at the new Freddy's got settled. I was excited to have a baby sister. After I died, I thought I'd never see her, but now…" He watched her dance her toy across the table. "Now, she's not even a baby anymore. Nathaniel, we've been here for over four years."

Timothy went to stand behind her. Katie turned around in her chair. She seemed to be looking straight through the brother she'd never seen before. "Henry doesn't want me to talk to strangers," she said.

Timothy stared at her, shocked. "Can…can you see me?" he asked, unbelieving.

She nodded timidly. Timothy was speechless. So was Nathaniel. Just then, Henry came back. "Ok, Katie. You ready to get some pizza?" he grinned.

"Henry! Henry! I made a friend!" she jumped up and down with excitement.

Henry looked around. "Who? I told you not to talk to strangers." Katie pointed at Timothy. Henry looked in that direction, confused. Then his expression changed to relief. "Oh, you've made an _imaginary_ friend. Did you two have fun together?"

"I didn't talk to him. He was a stranger," she pouted.

He laughed. "Well, you can talk to imaginary friends all you want," he smiled, taking her hand to walk her over to order their pizza.

"Wait," she told him, pulling him towards his invisible brother. "Henry says I can talk to you," she grinned, twirling around. Henry gave her a condescending smile and walked her away. Timothy watched them, mouth open.

"My sister can see me."

 **Katie has nothing to do with the sister location. This story is just about the first four games. Maybe someday I will write something about the sister location, but that day is not today.**


	8. Chapter 8

Just as Timothy had come to the old diner every afternoon with his brother, Katie and Henry came to Freddy's every day. And every day she would play with the brother who was invisible to all but her. Henry and the parents of partying children smiled when they saw her talking to her imaginary friend. None of them noticed that her conversations seemed a little too real, her games a little too complicated, almost as if she actually did have a companion to share her fun with.

Katie herself didn't suspect that her friend was any more than a figment of her imagination until almost a year after she had met Timothy. All the other children her age were giving up their pretend worlds in exchange for real friends, and Katie wondered why hers hadn't disappeared as well.

"Timmy?" she asked one day, "Timmy, am I weird because I talk to you?"

"Why would you think that?" he inquired.

"Other kids think I'm weird because I still have an imaginary friend. Henry and Mommy and Daddy say that I'm just going through a stage and I'll stop seeing you soon. But I don't want to stop seeing you and Nate."

"You're not going to stop seeing us," Timothy assured her. She smiled in relief. Nathaniel turned away. He knew that Henry and Katie's parents were only saying that she'd stop seeing them soon because they thought that he and Timothy were just imaginary friends that would be given up along with the rest of Katie's childish fantasies, but a part of him was afraid. What if Katie really did stop seeing them? He didn't think that he could stand it if he could see and hear the girl but she was blind to his existence like everybody else. He knew that that would shatter the happiness that Timothy had wanted so badly to have.

"Timmy, can I tell you something?" the little girl asked nervously.

"Of course, Katie! What's wrong?" asked her brother.

"Timmy," she but her lip, "Timmy, I think that I always sort of knew that Vixie wasn't actually a real princess. I sort of knew that before Henry told me. But Timmy, I think you and Nate are real. I love you, but I'm scared. If you're real, then why can't Henry or Mommy or Daddy see you?"

It was Timothy's turn to be nervous. He couldn't lie to his dear sister, but he couldn't really tell her the violent truth, either. Nathaniel was at a loss for words as well. Luckily for them, they were saved from having to answer by Henry walking over to the trio. "Come on, Katie. It's time to go."

"Ok, Henry. Goodbye," she waved to the two ghosts.

Henry gave a tired smile. "Don't you think you're getting a little too old for imaginary friends?" he asked.

Katie frowned at him. "They're not imaginary," she defended her invisible friends. Henry gave her a condescending smile and took her arm. She shook him off. "No!" she shouted, "They're real! They're real and their names are Nathaniel and Timothy and they're standing right there! I can see them, so why can't you?!" she cried.

Henry paled when she said the name of his dead brother. He made no move to take her hand again. The young man stared ahead. He was looking directly at Timothy, almost as if he was trying to see him. "Henry. I'm right here," whispered his brother. The little boy timidly started to reach one hand towards the young man. Henry's hand moved a little at his side, as if he was debating whether to try to touch the person he could not see.

Henry shook his head, clearing away any childish thoughts. "Come on, Katie. It's time to go," he said, pulling his whining sister out the door. He didn't wipe away the tear that sparkled on his cheek.

The first thing that Katie did after Henry left her alone the next day was confront Nathaniel and Timothy. "You're really ghosts, right? You aren't just imaginary," the little girl whispered, flinching slightly.

Timothy stared at the ground. Nathaniel gave a sad smile. "I guess you had to find out someday."

Her theory confirmed, Katie's shoulders slumped. "Oh." She bit her lip, not sure of what to say. "I'm sorry. I asked Mommy and Daddy if Henry knew anybody named Timothy or Nathaniel and they told me that I should have had two older brothers instead of one. They didn't know you, Nate, and they told me that they'd tell me what happened to you, Timmy, when I'm older. But I didn't tell them that I could see you."

"It's better if you don't," answered Nathaniel. He didn't know how much they would be grieving after five years, but it would be better to not open up old wounds and talk about a person they couldn't see or interact with in any way.

The little girl shifted from one foot to the other. "Ok, Nate."


	9. Chapter 9

**I'm sorry. Really, I am. It's about to get sad again.**

"Timmy! Nate! Do you remember what day it is?" Katie jumped up and down.

The older of the two ghosts pretended to ponder for a moment. "Hmm… Is it National Tickle Day?" Katie burst into a fit of giggles and covered her tummy from the playful assault she could not feel. A few parents gave curious stares.

"Happy birthday, little sis," smiled her brother. Even without her reminding them every day for the past month, Timothy and Nathaniel would have remembered that the only person they could talk to was turning six.

"I'm a birthday girl! I'm a birthday girl!" she announced to the whole pizzeria. A few parents smiled, but most people were too busy to notice. Katie didn't care. She continued to jump up and down in excitement. Then she twirled around until she was too dizzy to stand. She hit the ground, breathless and laughing, Vixie toy in hand. "I'm six now and next year I'll be seven and then I'll be eight and then I'll be your age, Timmy!" she giggled.

Nathaniel didn't find himself smiling. Katie was growing, but he and Timothy weren't. She was little now, but it wouldn't be too long before she passed her brother as well as Nathaniel in age. Then what would happen? She would be the only adult who could see the two invisible children, and that was assuming that she wouldn't outgrow her ability to see them. And eventually she would get old and die, and then what would happen to her and them?

He frowned as he watched her get tickled by her brother. How could he have thought that everything was going to be alright now that they could be seen by one person? Now she was growing up and Nathaniel couldn't imagine her as a little girl anymore. He couldn't watch them anymore. It was making him feel sick. He had to get away from this room, this girl, this truth. "You guys have fun. I just need to go for a little while," he excused himself. Once out of their sight, he broke into a run. He didn't stop until he was outside Freddy's.

"So, Miss Birthday girl, what do you want to do now?" asked her brother.

She shrugged, smiling. Neither child noticed the yellow rabbit until he spoke.

"So you're the birthday girl?" the man in the costume asked, bending down so his mask's eyes were staring directly at her. She nodded excitedly. "Well then, little princess, I happened to hear that there's a surprise waiting for you."

She jumped up and down. "Can I bring my friend with me? Can I?" She smiled at her brother. Nothing was better than sharing a birthday surprise with him.

If the man's expression changed, neither Katie nor Timothy could see it through the smiling mask. "Of course you can, little princess. You can bring a few friends if you like," he replied.

Katie skipped off. "Who should we invite?" her brother glanced over the crowd. Henry was off with his friends and Katie didn't talk to the other kids her age as much as she talked to her invisible friends.

"We need to take Vixie," decided the little girl. She made her way through the crowd, picking out the few people she knew by name. Five minutes later, a little group was following the yellow rabbit. Katie and Timothy were side by side, and behind them trailed a girl named Lucy, who had invited her over for a playdate once. Behind her was a boy from school, Brian, and a little boy, Joey, who had shared a slice of pizza with her one time. Last in line was a shy girl named Suzy who was hugging a doll.

"I haven't been back here before," whispered Katie as the group entered one of the back rooms. She squeezed her brother's hand, though it went right through her.

"That's probably just part of the surprise," Timothy assured her. What cause did he have to worry?

The man in the costume closed the door behind them. Lucy and Joey were talking to each other, Brian was inspecting an empty costume, and Suzy was wandering around aimlessly. "Timmy, why did the rabbit person close the door?" asked Katie.

"He's just getting your surprise ready," answered her brother. He glanced over at the man, who was wordlessly standing by the door, staring at the children, the perpetual smile of his mask hiding whatever expression he wore. Something about that blank smile unnerved Timothy. But why should it? This was just a happy birthday party.

The man took off one of his gloves. He took a key out of some pocket. Still not saying a word, he locked the door.

Katie nervously tugged on the man's arm. "Mr. Rabbit? Why are you locking the door?" she asked. The man turned his head toward her. She took a step backwards. The costume's blank eyes stared at her. "Mr. Rabbit?" she asked again. She reached out for her brother. "Timmy, I'm scared. What's going on? Why won't that man answer me?"

The man reached up and removed his mask. Carefully, he removed the rest of his costume. Underneath, he was just a normal man with a normal face wearing normal clothes. He smiled at her and then, with no precedent, he kicked one of the empty costumes on the ground. With lightning speed, he reached down and picked up the object that was waiting under the costume. Triumphantly, he held it up for all the children to see. Suzy gave a strangled yelp. The thing in the man's hand wasn't something anybody expected to find in a pizza place. That just isn't a place a person would expect to see a knife.

He grinned and advanced forward one step. Katie squeezed her brother's hand, unable to find the will to scream. "Happy birthday, princess," the man mocked. Then the knife came down.

 **Well, I have just made everyone sad and my little brother screamed at me, demanding that I write more so as not to be left on a depressing note. I will definitely try to finish the next chapter as soon as I can. Really, I am sorry for being such a dark author to these kids. I know that they are not my characters - all credit for the making of this game goes to Mr. Cawthon - but writing about them makes me care about them and want to make them happy, so hopefully the next chapter will be done soon.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Well, the first part is sad but then it gets better. I would like to quickly apologise for my spelling and grammatical errors. I do try to proofread my work but I usually have my brother read it over as well to catch any mistakes I missed. He is too depressed by this story, however, so he doesn't want to look at it and so it's just me doing the proofreading.**

Timothy knelt beside his sister. There was nothing he could do to save her. His insubstantial fists passed right through the murderer and his cries were inaudible to employees, parents, and partying children alike. The locked door might be no obstacle to the little ghost, but he could not share that ability and take his sister or any of the other children to safety. So the door remained as much of a barrier as ever, blocking out whatever the terrified children had managed to scream once they had realized what was going to happen to them.

Timothy had had to watch the man stick a knife through his sister. He had had to watch him do the same to the other children as they stared, mouths open, realizing too late how much danger they were in. He had had to watch the man take each of their lifeless bodies and shove them inside of the empty costumes that waited in the room. Then he had wiped the knife on one of the costumes' furry chests and just walked out, his act unseen by anyone who could bring up a case against him. The man had no reason for any of it; he had done it just because he could.

All Timmy could see of Katie was one eye that the mask hadn't managed to cover. She stared up at him and blinked. The other children were dead, but somehow, Katie was holding onto a thin sliver of life. Maybe the knife hadn't struck the most critical place or maybe her brother's presence was just allowing her to keep a thread of hope that she would not be abandoned. Either way, Timothy could do nothing for his sister except stare back at her and let them share this one moment.

Each time Katie blinked, her eye remained closed for a little longer. That sliver of life was slipping away. Soon she would be as lifeless as empty as the broken Fredbear costume. The scene was almost poetic: to have both brother and sister lose their lives in the same golden bear. But poetry was on neither one of the children's minds at that moment. The only thing they had was dispair.

Effortfully, Katie raised Fredbear's hand that covered her own. Timothy grabbed it and squeezed it as hard as he could, though his grasp was as effective as air. "I'm here, Katie. I wouldn't leave you," he whispered, spectral tears falling uncared about. She blinked at him one last time before letting her unsupported hand fall, thudding softly as it hit the ground.

Timmy knelt there, time uncared about in that room where life no longer existed. There was just him, his sister, and the other children lying a few feet away. Timothy had told his sister that it would be ok, but it hadn't been. He had let her and the other children follow that man into this room, and he had gotten them all killed. And then he hadn't been able to do a thing to stop their murderer. Maybe he deserved to be stuck here.

Timothy stayed in that room for a long time. In the hallway, a few employees searched on behalf of five pairs of parents for a group of missing children. As the hours passed, the seekers were replaced with policemen. Eventually, the door to the back room was opened.

Nathaniel walked up the street to Freddy's. An ambulance and two police cars sped past him. They stopped at his destination. Breaking into a run, he found himself in the middle of a crime scene. It didn't take him long to find the source of the horror, and when he reached the back room, he was greeted with the sight of two police officers pulling a screaming man away from the torn-up Fredbear animatronic that lay on the floor. "She's my daughter! You don't understand! Katie is my daughter!" cried the man.

His shouts were mixed with those of other frantic parents and the policemen countering, "All civilians must stand behind the yellow tape. Touching the evidence would be detrimental to finding the culprit!"

"To hell with you all! You never find anybody!" one voice rang out above the rest. Henry broke through the crowd and threw himself on top of Fredbear. "Katie!" he screamed, pulling the legs off the already broken robot. Underneath were the bloody legs of a little girl. "Who the hell did this to you, Katie!? I swear, I'll kill-" Two policemen grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away, but the rest of the crowd broke free and soon the room was a chaotic mess of screaming, fighting people.

"She's my sister too! I love her too!" Timothy's familiar voice came from near the center of the room. Nathaniel pulled his weeping friend away from all the people and action. He couldn't stay in this room for one more moment, and he knew being here wasn't good for Timothy, either.

Outside, Timothy refused to budge one more step. If he had a limited supply of tears, it would have been exhausted by now. "Nate! T-There was a man i-in a rabbit costume a-and - " The little boy told his friend everything. Though he knew the outcome of what had happened in that room, Nathaniel still paled when he heard his friend's story. "A-And it was all my fault b-because they n-never would have g-gone if I h-hadn't t-told Katie that she could g-g-go with h-him!" Timothy finished. He curled up on the floor as another series of sobs came on.

Nathaniel buried his face in his hands. This… this could have been prevented if he had just stayed with Timmy and Katie. From the way his little friend had described the murderer, he was the same person who had killed Nathaniel. If he had just stayed with his friends, even though he wouldn't have seen the man's face, surely he should have been able to recognize his voice. He would have been able to warn Katie and right now she and the other children would be safe at home and the murderer in jail. But Nathaniel hadn't been there. Instead, he had been sulking about something completely pointless! And now so many families and lives were broken and Timothy was blaming himself and it was all because he hadn't been there! But no amount of crying or wishing or blaming would bring back those five children. Nothing could change the past and nothing could bring back a life…

Bring back a life. Undoing death wasn't possible, but there was an alternative. His alternative. The bird… That had been a perverted mockery of life and had left to poor creature trapped in an unfamiliar body that it could not easily control. But with Timothy, it had been different. When he had brought back Timothy, and he was sure that he had been the one to bring him back, it had been different. He had done the same thing with the purple light that he had done with the bird, but whatever he had done had been less intense the second time around. The only problem was that he didn't have any idea how to control how intensely he did it. He might bring the kids back to be in the same ghostly state as himself and Timothy, but he might horribly trap them like he had with the bird.

Nathaniel looked down at his friend. The small boy was still curled up on the ground, a sob shaking his small body every few seconds. Katie was Timothy's sister, his best friend. He wouldn't do well without her. She might be happier wherever she was now and maybe Nate was being selfish for wanting to keep her here, but a world without sweet little Katie would be unbearable for both Timothy and Nathaniel. If there was a chance to bring her back, Nathaniel had to take it.

His decision set, Nathaniel took a step forward. "What… what are you doing?" asked Timothy, looking up.

The older boy looked down at his friend, a glint of hard determination in his eyes. "I'm going to bring back your sister."

* * *

The room was a mess. The police had managed to get everybody away from the scene, but the damage was clear. Whatever fingerprints that the technology of the late 80s could use to determine the culprit were muddled by the hands of parents frantic to get to their little ones with a desperate hope that even after all these hours they might still have time to be saved. There would be investigations, of course, but with most of the evidence destroyed, it wasn't likely that anybody would be brought to justice.

What worried Nathaniel most, though, was that the bodies were gone. _Of course they wouldn't just leave them here!_ he cursed himself. How was he going to bring back the kids if he didn't have the actual kids? The costumes were still here, though, and they were heavily stained with the children's blood. Torn up costumes and a lot of blood might be all he needed.

Timothy hovered by his side, not daring to speak. Nathaniel knelt beside the empty Chica, which according to Timothy had been where Lucy had ended up inside. It wasn't exactly an experiment, but he needed to practice before he did anything to his friend's precious sister. Closing his eyes, Nathaniel concentrated on the red-stained bird. _Please work. Please work_ , he repeated in his head. His hands began to glow a soft purple. So did the costume. It was working.

But then the costume stopped glowing. Nathaniel's hands didn't though. Eyes widening, he waved them around wildly in an attempt to dissipate the light. Life decided that the costume was too broken to be a suitable place to enter. Instead, it chose the thing most similar to the chicken on the floor: the chicken on the stage. "Stop!" Nathaniel cried, getting desperate. It did.

He sat down, breathing hard. He had almost just lost control. He looked over at Timothy. The younger boy was once again kneeling over Fredbear, staring at him with an unbearable hopelessness in his eyes. If this didn't work, that look might never go away. Nathaniel had to try again for him.

The chicken didn't move. _Lucy didn't come back. Maybe it's better for her that way._ He moved on to the empty Freddy costume, where Brian had been. _This is going to work_ , he told himself. He concentrated. His hands started to glow. So far, so good. But just as it had last time, the costume's light flickered out, choosing instead to glow around the less broken bear on the stage. The Freddy next to Nathaniel didn't move.

Though he didn't know any of these children particularly well, Nathaniel tried to picture Suzy's face as he stood over the Bonnie costume. He imagined her drawing at one of the tables, tried to get a clear picture of how she looked in the thought that maybe if he thought about who he was bringing back, that child would appear. She didn't.

Foxy's head lay at one corner of the room, his arms were several meters away, and the rest of him was torn up as well. But Joey had done a lot of bleeding, so if this didn't work, Nathaniel didn't think he could do anything for Katie. A purple light appeared in Pirate's Cove, but the fox in front of Nathaniel showed no signs of intending to move.

This was it, then. He had failed to resurrect any of the children. "I… I'm sorry," was all he could say to Timothy.

The younger boy blinked out more tears. "Couldn't you at least try to save Katie?" he sniffled. Nate sighed and knelt beside the golden bear. Unlike the other costumes, this old bear was in much better shape, having only lost his legs instead of being completely torn apart. _Fifth time's the charm_ , he told himself as he concentrated on the task in front of him. His hands began to glow. So did Fredbear. _Stay in control. Stay in control._ The glow stayed on, and it didn't flare up. When it died down, Nathaniel and Timothy stared at the bear intently. He did not move.

"Timmy? Nate?" The two boys nearly jumped. Behind them, fading into view, was unmistakably Katie. "Timmy? Nate? I… I don't feel so well…" She staggered forward, fading in and out of focus.

Her brother was at her side in an instant. "Katie! You're here! We're going to keep you safe!" he embraced her. The little boy was still crying, but these were happy tears.

"I… I'm a ghost now?" she blinked, this time staying in focus. The two boys nodded sadly. But it wasn't all sad. Even though nobody else could see or hear them, they at least had each other.

Outside the room, somebody screamed. Katie yelped and Timothy held his sister's hand. Nathaniel followed the screaming to the party room. It was in a state of complete chaos.

Up on the stage, the Freddy robot was waving his arms around in panic. Next to him, Bonnie covered his face and shook and Chica stumbled forward and fell off the stage. Out of the corner of his eye, Nate saw a blur of motion. Foxy sprinted into the room and began to gesture wildly as he ran. It was all unnatural and unnerving. But what on earth had caused the robots to act so completely against any ordered programming?

 _The children did come back._ As soon as he realized it, Nathaniel knew that that was the answer. The children had come back in the robots instead of the broken costumes, and now they were trapped and had as much of an idea of what was going on as the policemen who were trying to dodge the frantic movements of the crazed robotic mascots.

One policeman got it together enough to pull out a taser. "Stop!" cried Nathaniel, "It isn't what you think!" Of course, the man did not hear him. A moment later, Foxy was twitching on the floor, electric sparks shooting out of him. Freddy soon lay motionless beside him, power gone. Chica and Bonnie didn't fare as well. In the process of bringing her down, both of the chicken's arms snapped backwards, exposing thick metal wires. And Bonnie - or Suzy as Nathaniel tried to think of the tall purple rabbit as the shy little girl - would not let go of his - or her - face as the girl tried to block out all the lights and sounds around her. The thick purple arms were wrenched down to her sides and along with them came the costume's mask. The threats neutralized, one policeman took a wary step forward. None of the robots moved.

Needless to say, Freddy's was going to shut down for a little while.


	11. Chapter 11

"A-A-And then I opened my eyes and I-I was on the stage a-and Freddy was next to me a-and then s-suddenly I _was_ Freddy and th-there were s-so many people and I d-didn't know what t-to do and it w-was so s-scary and th-then the p-people started s-screaming and i-it was s-s-so scary!" Brian was sobbing out the story of what had happened on the stage. All of the children had been thrown out of their new bodies the moment that they had sustained enough damage from being attacked, so now Nate and Timmy were in a room with five ghosts in various states of shock. Lucy and Joey stared around looking bewildered, and Suzy was rocking back and forth and covering her face as if she thought it would make everything bad go away. Timothy let Katie squeeze his hand, unsure of whether to be screaming about the situation they were in or relieved that his sister was safe. Nathaniel was feeling certain that if he had to stand in this room surrounded by crying children for one more second, he was going to lose it.

Somehow, Nate had to get these kids to calm down. A solution was neither easily said nor done, and he was really getting frustrated. There was no use trying to think of a way to get these kids to stop crying and feel better if he was on the verge of yelling at them. Right now, he needed to get away and pull himself together.

With a quick hop, Nathaniel flew upwards and through the roof. It was much quieter on top of the building. He took a few deep breaths through nonexistent lungs and felt much better. It was beautiful and quiet and calm and peaceful up there, the stars shining above and the buildings and streets dark below. It seemed for almost a moment that there were no problems to worry about.

"Kids, I need you to come see something," Nathaniel called as he floated to a landing on the floor of the pizzeria. Slowly, Suzy raised her tear-streaked face. Joey and Lucy blinked out of their numb shock. Brian took a timid step forward.

"It's up here," Nathaniel pointed at the ceiling. Katie glanced at her brother before entering an unsteady hover. Seeing their friend take action, the rest of the children tried to fly as well. Joey ended up upside down and Lucy kept flapping her arms and going off course, but they eventually all got to the roof.

"See those stars? All of them are together up there, and they're all happy. That's where we're going to go; we just need to stay here a little longer." Nathaniel wasn't certain if that was true, but it was a hope he was holding onto. That hope that things would get better was the only thing keeping him going. He had given that hope to Timothy and now he was giving it to the children.

They all stared at the night sky. What a beautiful hope it was to have, and the children and Timothy were all smiling peacefully, completely believing that they would get to reach the stars if they just waited a little longer. Only the one who had given them that hope had a shadow of doubt. He and Timmy had been here for six years, and telling himself that they would move on soon was sounding less true every day. And though the innocent children all believed that the curtain of stars was an immutable place where everything was safe and happy, the little voice of experience in the back of Nate's mind kept reminding him of the facts: that stars were so far away from them and each other that it took light years to reach them and of course, the truth that stars could die just like everything else.

"Ready to go back?" asked Timothy. The sky was beginning to lighten with the rising of the sun. They had been up on the roof for a while. Katie gave a little nod and descended into the building. Timmy followed his sister and the rest of the children followed Timmy. Nate came last, taking one last look at the fading stars as he sent up a silent prayer that the hope that he had given to the children and himself was not a false one.

Lucy stood over the Chica robot. "I guess I was in control of this," she remarked, nudging it with a foot that passed right through. "I wonder if I could do it again." She knelt beside the armless robot and put her hands over it. "I'm not really sure how I did it last time," she admitted.

"What if you imagined yourself being Chica? You know, looking through her eyes and stuff," suggested Joey, standing eagerly by her side. The girl nodded and closed her eyes. She began to fade. "Lucy! Why are you disappearing?!" Joey's eyes were wide with terror.

He was answered by a burst of static and the fallen Chica robot flapping her wire wings as she struggled to get up. Joey and the other children screamed and ran to cling to Nathaniel who was too surprised to be annoyed that five kids were crawling all over him. The robot looked as bewildered as the children. She gave one static-filled squawk before going still. Lucy faded in next to her. "I did it!" she announced proudly.

Lucy closed her eyes and disappeared again. This time, Chica was successful in her attempt to stand up. She looked over her friends and took a slightly unsteady bow. Excited to see if they had the same new ability as Lucy, Brian and Joey practically ran over to the robots that they had been terrified of hours before. Before long, Freddy and Foxy were prancing around. Even Suzy ended up giving into curiosity and joined her friends.

"Do you think I can do that?" asked Katie.

Timothy smiled. "Of course you can!" He took her hand and led her to the back room where Fredbear lay. They grimaced at the still bloodstained costumes.

 _It's easy to forget about that when you're watching the stars_ , thought Nathaniel. There wasn't anything that could hurt the kids now, so he felt safe leaving them to their play. But being in the same room where such things had happened so recently made him nervous for them. He took another peek at the ghost children. They were still running around happily. He could afford to spend some time with two kids he really knew as friends.

"I'm going to try this," Katie told both herself and her friends. She faded out.

"Katie? You ok?" Timmy asked nervously, hovering next to her. Fredbear's fingers twitched. Slowly, he gave a thumbs up. Timmy and Nate sighed in relief. Katie struggled to try to grab her new body's missing legs. Timothy rushed over to try to help her, momentarily forgetting that he just went through everything. His sister just gave another thumbs up and began to try to reattach the costume's pants. Successful in her attempt, she appeared next to them.

"That was harder than it looked," she panted.

"Well, the other kids have robots and Fredbear is just a costume. I'm surprised you got to move at all," Nate remarked. He cocked his head at the bear. "I made Fredbear glow when I brought you back, Katie, and now you can control him. But I did the same thing to you, Timmy. I wonder… maybe you can control him, too."

Slowly, Timothy walked over to the costume. He disappeared and the golden bear kicked one of his reattached legs. He stood up and walked over to the Foxy head on the floor. Somewhat unsteadily, he bent down and picked it up. Then he sat down and Timothy's ghostly form appeared next to his two friends. To their surprise, his face was streaked with tears. "Why didn't you tell me I could do that?!" he demanded.

Nate took a step backward in surprise. "Wh-What - I didn't know you could control Fredbear! I found that out the same time you did!"

"You could have told me that you _bound my soul to a costume_!" the little boy screamed. "I might have figured the rest out myself! I might have saved Katie and the kids! In case you haven't realized, ghosts may not be able to do anything, but Fredbear was in the room with the murderer. I could have fought back and saved everybody instead of just watching people get killed!" Tears streamed down his face in unchecked torrents. He took a step backwards, looking unbelievably hurt. "Katie wouldn't have died if I had just known," he sniffled.

"I… I… I'm sorry." It seemed like such a stupid thing to say, but he could think of nothing else. Timothy had deserved to know how Nathaniel had brought him back. And yet he hadn't told him. That the kid couldn't handle the truth wasn't a justification. Timothy had handled much worse. Nate felt like a jerk.

Timothy sat down. "I couldn't save my sister and now I'm yelling at the first person who decided to be my friend," he sighed. "What is wrong with me?"

"Don't blame yourself for my mistake. If I had just not been sulking over stupid little things, the murderer would be sitting in jail by now and we'd all be laughing," said Nathaniel. He sat down next to Timothy. "I guess I really messed up."

Timmy cracked a smile. "Then I guess we'll be losers together."

"I wanna join the loser club!" Katie took a seat next to them. "I had to reattach my legs a minute ago. That makes me the biggest loser of all," she grinned. Soon they were all arguing about who was more of a loser than who and they were all laughing about it. Pretty soon, none of them felt like losers.

"I'd better go check on the kids," Nate remembered. Smiling, his two friends got up and flew through the wall and into the party room. They found the four children hovering next to the stage. A group of workers were hauling the robots into the back room. Timmy and Katie's father, the manager of Freddy's, shouted into a phone loudly enough for him to be heard from his office in the next room.

"I don't care what you do to the place, just as long as I never have to see it again!" he yelled. "Don't you realize how it feels to look at something and remember how everything used to be before it was all stripped away!" In his hand was Katie's toy Vixie. Each word was punctuated by him shaking it with frightening anger. "I told you, you can have Freddy's! Do whatever you want with it! Just never ask me to come back because it's making me sick to be here right now!"

He slammed the phone down and stormed out the door, looking as if he was ready to squeeze all the love out of Vixie and at the same time tear apart the reminder of his daughter. "Daddy?" Katie whispered. He didn't turn back.

He vowed to never return to that establishment.

 **So here ends another part of this story. I know that there are a lot of theories about the chronology of the games, but since I have to pick some order of time I'm just going to go with the fourth game happening first and then an intermediate Freddy's and then the second game, the first, and finally the third game. I'm not sure if this is correct but I heard a lot of people saying that that is what they believe so that is the timeline that this story is going to follow.**


	12. Chapter 12

"I guess the place really is opening. It feels a bit weird having all these people here suddenly," Timothy said to Nathaniel and Katie as the three of them stood by the door and watched a group of workers sweeping the floor and putting up new posters for the grand reopening of Freddy's. After almost six weeks of waiting, the new owner had decided that it was time to get some profit from his investment and open the remodeled pizzeria's doors to the public. With his reputation as the owner of a rival franchise, a super kid-friendly one that could boast being accident free, his new management gave the pizzeria a fair chance at staying open despite all that had happened in it.

Lights and music erupted from the stage area. The three ghosts turned to see an employee desperately trying to find the power switch on the shiny new Freddy robot who had started up a preprogrammed series of dance steps. The worker managed to flip the off switch and the motion died down with a mechanical whirr. The excitement over, the rest of the employees went back to what they had been doing. "Those new animatronics sure are something," commented Nathaniel.

"They're ruining Dad's place. The new Freddy is too fat, Bonnie looks weird, and there's something creepy about Chica's body. Why can't everything just stay the way it was?" Timothy glared at the new Freddy and Co, who were currently being admired by Brian, Lucy, Joey, and Suzy. To the kids, once their initial sadness had worn off, they had turned their situation into an adventure, a forever escape into a fantasy world of play with no adults to give orders. For Timothy, however, the new management and animatronics had turned a world that was familiar and through that, comforting, into some strange mockery of his father's restaurant.

"I really like the new Foxy. She kind of reminds me of Vixie," Katie let them know her opinion. Timothy sighed. If his sister liked it, he couldn't hate it completely.

When the pizzeria had its grand reopening to the public, the new Foxy proved to be liked by more than just Katie. Nate and Timothy rushed to the source of their friend's screaming, thinking that someone was in trouble, and instead found her pointing at a swarm of toddlers pulling the pink and white fox apart. "They're _ruining_ her! She looks _horrible_ now!" cried Katie. Nate grimaced. The animatronic that had once been a cute remake of Foxy was now a mangled pile of wires and scrap metal. An employee walked in and began to yell at the toddlers, but one of his coworkers pulled him away. "Let the kids have their fun," he shrugged. The irony of the statement hit Nathaniel harder with Katie standing next to him and the rest of the murdered children playing somewhere nearby. Apparently, some children were allowed to have fun here while others had everything torn away from them. "Let's get out of this room," Nathaniel said with disgust.

* * *

"Dad never had someone watching the place at night," Timothy scowled as all seven ghosts hovered next to one of the room's air vents.

"Well, the new owner did put a lot of money into the new robots, so I can see why he wouldn't want to risk them getting stolen or something," reasoned Nathaniel. "He can't see us, anyway, so I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Still, it's a bit creepy having somebody watching us," Timmy folded his arms.

Nate felt a tug at his sleeve. "Um, Nate, is it ok if we play hide and seek?" asked Joey. Nate nodded and the excited kids ran off to start their game.

He noticed that Katie was still with him and Timothy. "Aren't you going to play with them?" he asked.

"I don't feel like playing," she shrugged. The three of them watched the guard take another look at the camera monitor screen. "Hey, Nate," she began, "I was just wondering, if you did something to Timmy and now he can control Fredbear, and then you did something to me and my friends so now we can control the other robots, then did someone do something to you and let you control anything?"

Surprised, Nathaniel didn't know how to respond. "Maybe if nobody let you control one specific robot, you can control them all?" Timothy suggested.

"That would be amazing!" Katie clapped her hands with excitement. "Please please pretty please try it!"

The two children pushed their older friend to the nearest animatronic: a puppet-like robot that was supposed to come out of its box with a plastic present in hand when its music box was playing but through some mixup in programming instead only came out in the absence of sound. The new owner was planning on getting it fixed once the place proved to be successful enough to invest more into. "Ok ok I'll try it! Just give me a second!" Nate tried to stop the assault his two little friends were giving him.

Nathaniel found himself sitting inside of the box. He tried to blink, but found he couldn't. He felt so… strange. Unsteadily, he stood up and found himself looking over the edge of the open box. Katie and Timmy stood side by side, staring at him. "It's like you but at the same time not," breathed Timothy.

Nate closed his eyes and found himself on his own two feet again. The Puppet stood in its box behind him, staring blankly ahead. "That has to be the strangest thing I've ever done," muttered Nathaniel. He found himself admiring the kids for being able to do that without so much as flinching.

Speaking of the kids, Lucy started shouting, "I found you!" Nate, Timmy, and Katie heard Brian's hysteric giggles as he came out of his hiding spot.

"Let's go play with them," Timmy suggested. Katie nodded, feeling up to it. She skipped off to find a place to hide.

"You guys have fun," said Nathaniel. He turned to face The Puppet. Nate had gone through a lot, but inside, he was still a middle-school boy with a sense of pride that would not allow him to let children younger than him play with these robots with ease while he felt nervous doing the same. No, he was the oldest, so he should be the least afraid and he was going to make himself face this. If that meant spending some time trying to make himself feel comfortable possessing a robot, then that's what he'd do. Besides, it kind of felt good to have a body again, even if it was very little like his old one.

Timmy wandered around, searching for a good place to hide. The back room looked like a good option. Quickly, he surveyed the room. Nobody was there but Fredbear. Good. Timmy ducked behind the large costume just as Suzy entered the room. "Hello?" she called. "Is anybody here?" She glanced around the room. Finding nobody standing out in the open, she shrugged and left to search for a less hidden player.

"I think this is the best hiding spot," whispered Katie.

Timmy nearly jumped. "How long have you been here?" he whispered back. Surely he would have seen her when he had first entered the room.

The little girl gave a mischievous smile. "I'm a good hider."

Her brother frowned. Katie smiled and disappeared. A second later, Fredbear gave a little thumbs up. "Katie! That's cheating!" Timothy scolded. Katie appeared next to him again and put a finger to her lips. "Don't give away our hiding spot," she giggled as she faded away.

"Come on, Katie!" a frustrated Timothy demanded. He received no answer. "If you don't get out of there right now, I'm going to have to get you out," he warned. Still no reply. Quietly seething, the little ghost had to act on his threat.

He found that controlling Fredbear was a lot different when two kids were trying to do it at the same time. Their movements became jerky and erratic as Timothy attempted to sit them down while Katie wanted to run away. Under conflicted control, the golden bear stepped over his own paws and threatened to tip over. "What's happening?!" Timmy heard his frightened sister scream inside their shared head. Feeling completely out of control, he was terrified as well. Now he, too, just wanted to get away. He started trying to run in the same direction that Katie was pushing them to go.

The moment their desired courses merged, something happened. Suddenly, neither child was in control. Katie and Timmy both screamed, unheard by anyone outside of the costume, as the room around them began to fade to darkness. In its place, another scene faded in. The man in the new room stared at them for a few seconds of shock before jumping out of his chair and screaming hysterically. Nate sprang out of his box and sprinted toward the source of the screaming, not bothering to leave his new body.

He found himself in a room with Fredbear and the first night watchman of the pizzeria's short history. He looked from the bear to the frightened man. Timmy and Katie looked from their friend to the man. The man looked from one robot to the other, reasonably concluded that the demons of hell were out to get him for not helping that old lady cross the street that morning, and after an impressive jump over the desk to get past the two animatronics, took off like a shot out of the room and building. Sure as heck he wasn't going to come back for another night.

 **Edit: The message in the next paragraph might sound accusatory. It is not meant to. I am sorry that it was and everybody who thought that is sorry as well now that they know that the review in question was not saying anything harmful. Let there be peace.**

 **Ok. I, um, I don't really know what to do. I received a review from an anonymous user and I really want to respond to it but I don't think I'm allowed to reply directly because that is probably violating the no interactive stories rule. Instead, I will generalize the message as an author's note because I guess it kind of applies to everybody anyway. First off, thank you for reviewing. I really appreciate it that you all enjoy this story. I have to admit something, though. If I look like I am into the lore, I don't know if I am. In all honesty, I have pretty much no idea what the lore is supposed to be. I was introduced to this game two years ago and didn't even think that it had a story until a lot of people told me that it quite obviously did. Logically, I started looking over the games again and trying to find a story. I probably messed up because my brother said his classmates looked at him weird when he told them my version of the story. Anyway, I took it, added personalities to the characters, had them interact, and came up with this. It probably isn't what the story to the games is supposed to be and there are definitely some parts that I know aren't in the reality (such as two kids possessing Golden Freddy), but it is what I am going to write.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Hooray for writing sprees and weekends! I heard some boys at my school saying that they thought that Jeremy was a teenager, though I don't know where they got that idea. Since then, I've pictured him as one, too. Well, good luck to him. The kids would never hurt him, right? Well, *ominous clouds gather in the sky* accidents can happen.**

Timmy, Katie, and Nathaniel watched the new guard wind up the new music that had been installed due to the previous guard's insistence that the puppet animatronic had somehow gotten out of its box and tried to attack him. The skeptical management had given in and added the music box to keep the puppet's box closed after the guard had threatened to sue the company. Then they had moved him to the day shift to avoid further trouble. A kid on summer break had been all too happy to fill the position of night watchman for a few bucks.

The three ghosts watched him adjust the "Hello my name is: Jeremy" name tag on his uniform and then lean back in his chair to try and get more comfortable. Nate frowned. "I've seen that guy before," he told his friends. "He was just a kid, though. And now… Well, I guess that's what six years will do." He watched the teen absentmindedly fiddle with his name tag some more. "It's just strange thinking that everything else moves on while we're still stuck here."

Katie bit her lip. "I'm afraid about how all the kids I used to know are going to get to grow up but I won't. I hope we get to the stars soon. Everything will be better up there, right?"

"Of course it will, Katie, and we'll get to leave soon. I know it," Timothy assured her, perfectly confident that his statement was true. Nate found himself staring at the ceiling to avoid making eye contact with the two children. Timothy noticed his unease. "Come on, you said it yourself. Everything is going to get better soon," he nudged his friend.

"Yeah, of course," Nate quickly replied. Watching this guard was doing no good to him. It was too much of a reminder that the kid who used to chase his friends around with a squirt gun had moved on with his life while Nate didn't have a life to move on with. Facing it was just too depressing. "Come on, guys," he tilted his head towards the exit. "We should let Jeremy do his work in peace."

"But he doesn't even notice we're here. Why do we have to leave?" complained Katie.

"Let's just go with Nate, Katie," Timmy came to his friend's defense. "He's right; it's rude for us to be here, even if nobody can see us." Katie grumbled a protest but took her brother's hand anyway. She watched Jeremy for another second and then sighed and turned away to go with her two friends. "We'll find something more fun than staring at a guy at a desk," Timothy promised.

Jeremy received another minute of peace (though he didn't notice any difference) before the rest of the children found him. Joey took a curious step forward. The guard continued to sit in boredom. Joey took another step forward. Just then, the desk's phone started ringing. Startled, Joey and Jeremy jumped back, Jeremy accidentally tilting the desk forward as he pushed the chair out to get off of it. The phone and camera monitors slid across the desk and Jeremy leapt into action to save them from falling off. With lightning speed found from his motivation to not have to show his employer a bunch of broken security equipment after only one day on the job, the monitor screen was rescued quickly. The phone was not so lucky. It gave one last ring for help before hitting the floor and going silent. The young guard said some words he wouldn't have said had he known that he was in the presence of a group of children and put the phone back on the desk. The kids watched him pace back and forth for a few minutes, trying to think of how he could explain this to his boss. Eventually, the unplugged cord caught his eye and to his immense relief, he caught the last few words of the recorded message. The phone unbroken, he sat back in his chair for a hopefully uneventful rest of the night.

"What do you think the guy on the phone said?" Suzy wondered out loud.

Her friends shrugged. "I heard one of the workers recording something during the day," Joey offered. "He was talking about some sort of problem with the new robots. But he kept saying that everything was actually ok, so that's good."

Suzy sighed in relief. "Good. I'd be really sad if something bad happened." She went back to watching Jeremy. After a moment, she frowned. "Hey, why is Bonnie walking off the stage? He didn't do that yesterday."

"The guy recording the message said something about that," remembered Joey. Jeremy still hadn't noticed what was happening on the monitor screen for the stage. "He said that Bonnie and Freddy and their friends were getting fixed during the day but something happened to them so they might try to walk around at night. He kept saying that that was ok, though. But then he started talking about how they might try to turn Jeremy into a robot. He said that there was nothing to worry about, though, so I guess everyone'll be fine."

Suzy didn't look convinced. She became even more nervous when Chica made her way off the stage, and she jumped along with Jeremy when he finally checked on the stage camera. Beginning to realize that this job wasn't going to be as easy as it had first seemed, the young guard sighed and picked up his flashlight, preparing to leave the safety of his brightly lit office. The four children followed behind him in a little group.

It was hard to say whether Jeremy found Freddy or if Freddy found Jeremy. At any rate, the night watchman found himself face to face with the robotic bear. They stared at each other for a moment before Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Listen, I don't care if you run the show during the day," he grumbled at Freddy, "but you're going to have to behave yourself at night." He grabbed the bear's paw to drag him back to the stage. Freddy had other plans. "Wha-?!" cried Jeremy as he found himself being the one getting dragged away. Officially terrified, he franticly struggled to get free. He sprinted into the parts and service room, the closest place that offered decent places to hide, not bothering to look back to see if Freddy had decided to give chase.

"I'm afraid," whispered Suzy. She and her friends watched Jeremy pile the old versions of the robots up against the door so he would not be seen. "I don't like the new Freddy anymore," she sniffled.

* * *

The company had learned from their mistake with the previous guard and wasn't going to let Jeremy go as easily. Vowing to never sign another contract that forced him to stay at a job for at least a week, he unhappily made his way to the guardroom. Needless to say, he wasn't thrilled when he heard the phone messages from last night and the current one. Looking over the flashlight and empty Freddy head his employers had provided, he sighed and got ready for a long night.

The stage emptied. "I'm afraid," Suzy whispered. Lucy squeezed her hand. "Why did Nate and Timmy and Katie have to leave again tonight?" she sniffled.

Brian bit his lip with nervousness. "I don't know. They aren't here, though, so we have to be the big kids now." He glanced at the cameras again. "But what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to stop Freddy from getting Jeremy if neither of them can see us or hear us?"

They were all quiet as they tried to think up a solution.

"We could use the old robots," Lucy suggested. "They're broken, but we can still control them."

Suzy shifted uncomfortably. "Um, we can't talk when we're controlling them, though. Their voice boxes are all broken. We can't tell Jeremy that we want to take him to hide in the parts and service room with us," she reminded them.

"We could point and stuff, and we can pick stuff up and do all sorts of things with them that we can't do as ghosts," Lucy proposed. Her friends had no objections. The quartet happily set off to help Jeremy survive his shift.

Five minutes later, the little group reconvened. "This is impossible!" complained Lucy. She hovered in front of Chica, who was motionlessly standing in the hall.

Also in ghost form, Joey paced angrily. "Why does he keep flashing that light at my face? It's really bright and it hurts!"

"I just went into his office," reported Suzy. "He was wearing his mask and just staring at me. I think there's something wrong with him."

"He's probably afraid of us," grumbled Lucy. "We look all broken and creepy. Even I'm a little afraid of us, and _I_ know we're not trying to hurt anybody." She glanced at wire-armed Chica and shuddered.

"At least the new Freddy and his friends don't try to do anything to us," said Brian as he floated next to the older version of the singing bear. "I guess that controlling a robot counts as being a robot for them, so at least they won't hurt us. I guess we should just try to keep them out of his office."

Suzy brightened up. "And once he's safe, he'll realize we aren't trying to hurt him!" she concluded. It sounded like a perfect plan.

 **Children, you know not what you have done. So much for trying to give Jeremy an easy five nights. :/**


	14. Chapter 14

The sun shone brightly over the pizzeria. Nate watched a group of children playing around in the prize corner. It was a happy group, so young, so innocent, so alive. He couldn't help but have their joy rub off on him.

A small boy and girl both grabbed the same toy at the same time. The girl tugged the plush towards her and the boy pulled back. The poor bear looked about to rip in half. Luckily, though the box was closed on account of the noise, an employee had taken the Puppet out so it could mechanically wave to the children playing near it. After all, what use was having the robot if it couldn't entertain any kids?

In his new masked form, Nathaniel walked over to the fighting children. "Hey, kids," he said, bending down to be eye level with them. They stopped pulling at the toy to stare at him. "Here you go," Nate handed the boy another plush from the shelf and gave the disputed one to the girl. Both children squeezed their new playthings.

"Thanks Mr. Marionette!" grinned the girl.

"Yeah! Thanks!" echoed the boy. He and his friend started playing again. Nate sat down on top of the box, depossessing to let the Puppet get back to waving. He'd watch the kids a little longer.

"Hey Nate," Timmy plopped down next to him, invisible to the playing children. They sat quietly for a few minutes. Then Timothy got up and stretched. "Well, I'm bored. Katie and the kids said they wanted to go out cuz they're tired of staying inside all day and night and I said I'd take them, so I'd better get going before they get too hyper."

Nate frowned. "How far out are you planning on going? Maybe I should come with you." He wasn't about to let his friends get lost.

Timmy rolled his eyes. "We're just going around the block. Really, you're acting like I don't know what common sense is."

"I was just making sure you were going to be safe," retaliated Nate.

"Well, we're as safe as a group of dead people can be, so you can quit worrying. And you can stop treating me like a child while you're at it."

"But you are a child."

"I'm nine and I've been dead for six years. That means I'm fifteen. Just because I'm not growing doesn't mean time doesn't count."

Nate sighed. He definitely saw his friend as still nine in both appearance and maturity. Still, if Timothy was never going to get to grow past age nine, it wasn't really fair to never give him any freedom. The kid deserved a little time in his own spotlight. "Alright. You can go," he conceded. "Just please don't do anything stupid like you did when you teleported Fredbear."

Timmy groaned. "I told you I didn't mean to do that," he sighed in exasperation. "And even if I wanted to do it again, Katie says she doesn't. I get a cool power and I can't even practice it. Whyyyyyy?"

Nate laughed at his friend's exaggerated angst. "Well, I'm sure you'll get to someday. In the meantime, you'd better go have some fun outside. You know, before the kids get too hyper."

Timmy smiled back. "Yeah, they're pretty excited. Well, have fun staring at your group of toddlers." With that, he floated out of the room.

A few minutes later, a costumed employee came in. Nate payed him no mind; employees were supposed to check on the kids and make sure they were entertained. The man stood a few feet away from the Puppet's box, quietly watching the children. The little girl and the little boy and their little friends happily played on, undisturbed by his presence. The man walked behind the little boy and still nothing seemed terribly wrong. Nothing about the scene left the category of ordinary happenings in the pizzeria until he bent down to eye level with the child and asked, "May I see your toy?" The boy reluctantly handed it over. The man turned it over in his hands. "Hmm. He has a rip."

"Where?" wondered the child, trying to see the alleged tear.

The employee withheld the bear. "I could fix him up. It'll only take a minute." He paused, tilting his head to one side as if he was considering something. "Do you want to watch me?" he finally asked.

The boy nodded excitedly. "Sure, Mr. Rabbit!" he grinned.

The girl he had been fighting over the toy with perked her head up. "Can I come, too?" she asked. "Can I see it, too?"

Soon a little group of little children was trailing behind the costumed employee. Nate watched them go. The man was just showing a couple of kids how to fix a stuffed animal - nothing wrong with that. Still, something felt off about the whole situation. Not enough to make alarm bells go off in Nate's head or anything, but enough to make him feel mildly nervous. He glanced around quickly. Nobody else was in the room. Nobody to see the Puppet stop waving and follow the group into the back of the building.

Nate snuck in behind the last child and quickly took a few steps into the shadows of the room. Something told him that it might not be the best idea to let the kids or the man see a mechanical marionette somehow following them around. Well, he'd only be there for a little while, anyway. Most likely everything was fine and he'd soon be laughing at himself for being so nervous and suspicious.

All five of the little children jumped when the door slammed behind them. The employee stood in front of it, his expression unreadable behind the mask. If Nate's mask had been able to frown, he would have. The man was just standing there, staring, and it was getting creepy.

Quickly and efficiently, the employee began to take off his costume. Mask gone, Nate could see his face. If he could pale, the color would have completely drained out of his face. In that moment, he didn't care that the man couldn't hurt him. He still was terrified of the person who had murdered him.

By the time Nate snapped himself back to reality, the costume's torso and legs were off as well. "Mr. Rabbit, um, sir? What are you doing?" one of the children timidly spoke. The killer responded with a smile. He advanced a step towards the group.

"Get out of here while you still can! Come on kids - run!" The would-be murderer wheeled around to see an animatronic holding the door open. "I said RUN!" That seemed to shock the children into alertness. Quickly, the group sprinted out the open door. One of them had the sense to start screaming. Soon parents and employees would be running in to catch the kidnapper.

The man's face twisted in rage. If he had time, he would have smashed that robotic thing into scrap metal. But he had to get out of there before anybody found him. Pushing past the last child, he got out of the room. As he fled, Nate shouted, "Get what you deserve for what you did to us, you monster!"

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to slip in, do what he came to do, slip out, and read about it in the paper the next day. He wasn't supposed to be caught at the scene of the crime! Taking a few deep breaths, he slowed his pace. He needed to get it together - it wouldn't do to arouse suspicion by panting and sweating in front of all these people. They could all see his face. If even just one person reported something about him, the cops might investigate him and they might find some link between him and the other murders and if that happened… No. He had to calm down. All his careful planning was not going to end like this. He was going to be ok. He was walking out the front door of the pizzeria. Everything was going to be fine. He wasn't doing anything suspicious, just walking out of a building. Nothing was off about that.

He kept walking. Steady pace. Staying calm. He could do this. He was going to be fine. It was a mishap that would not happen again. But what exactly had happened? That robot had come and ruined his plan. It was a freaking pile of bolts and wires and it had almost gotten him caught! How had this happened?!

No… Those panicked night watchmen were either hallucinating or trying to get attention. He had rolled his eyes when he overheard the first guy telling his boss that he was going to quit because the animatronics had started moving around and had tried to attack him. And he had been equally annoyed when he had overheard that guy's replacement start pleading to get out of some contract on the grounds that they had spent the whole night wandering in and out of the office - even the broken ones that weren't supposed to be able to move anymore. He had passed the stories of those two men off as ridiculous, but after what he had just seen, he wasn't so sure of what to think. But what would cause those robots to go so wildly against their programming? And that puppet thing had said something about getting what he deserved for what he had done to "us." What did that mean? The killer paled. No. It couldn't be. But… Revenge for "us." A group of broken robots and one malfunctioning new one. A group of dead kids, plus that teen at the old diner. It fit together too perfectly to just be a coincidence.

It's every murderer's worst nightmare to have his victims come back. He had to destroy those robots. Too bad he had to keep away from this town until the police quieted down their search for the would-be kidnapper.

As far as the events of the day were concerned, the phone message that night finished with an assurance that whatever troubled whispers had sprung up during the afternoon, however tragic they may be, had nothing to do with Freddy's. It was all just rumor and speculation.


	15. Chapter 15

Whatever "rumors" of a kidnapping and almost a murder were being spread about what had happened that day grew into an angry case against the pizzeria staying open to the public. An investigation started the next day. If the rumors that were rapidly being confirmed to be true didn't turn away customers, the policemen looking around the place certainly did. Despite the company's best efforts to assure everyone that nothing was wrong, less people came every day. Most unnerving was the strange report that each of the kidnapped children insisted was true: that one of the animatronics had temporarily achieved a creepy amount of sentience, followed them into the room they had been taken to, and started yelling at them and the kidnapper. Nothing seemed altered or malfunctioning in said robot, however, so it was unexplainable how it could have even walked out of the room by itself. Whatever had caused the strange behavior, it frightened people. There was even an accusation that the kidnapper had reprogrammed it to help him lure the children into the back. That of course led to the assumption that the rest of the animatronics were wired as well.

The manager tried in vain to keep the public thinking that his place was safe. He opened up a new position of secondary day guard to put an extra pair of eyes on the children. Jeremy seemed like a good candidate to fill that position, if only to stop his insistent complaining to get out of the night shift. He was going to be offered the job soon, that is, as long as the place didn't close down first. And that appeared to be what was going to happen. Customers weren't coming and the demands to make sure that the robots wouldn't do something unpredictable or even dangerous had no way of being fulfilled. Management had even gotten desperate enough to try calling up the original owner to see if he knew anything that could help, even though he had never even seen this new batch of animatronics. Timmy and Katie perked up upon hearing their father's voice, but the man made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with anything with the word "Fazbear" in it. He hung up and answered no more calls. Shutting down seemed inevitable.

Jeremy was finishing up his sixth night. Nate had managed to avoid the guard once again and was out showing Timmy and Katie how neon signs work while the rest of the kids ran through their nightly shenanigans. The clock read 5:56AM. Being so close to the end of the night and, more importantly, to the end of his dreaded job, Jeremy was looking a lot less upset than he usually did. He was filled with hope as he thought about how close he was to the end of the nightmares. That hope blinded him to just one problem: the shift was not actually over yet.

He checked the cameras again. _Finally I'm getting out of this!_ he thought happily. He was soooo looking forward to this shift being over so he could finally get some sleep. The neighbor's dogs had been acting up all afternoon and he was pretty sure he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep during the day. And thinking about the day shift he'd have to start in only an hour after this one was finished was exhausting to just think about. He'd have to go home and try to get some sleep before that. Oh how ready he was to go home and sleep. He yawned, closing his eyes just for one second…

 _He isn't wearing his mask_ , was the first thing Suzy realized upon entering the guard room. The second thing she realized was that Toy Chica was walking up behind her. Suzy shuddered. She liked the new chicken well enough during the day, but she definitely creeped her out when the robot's beak and friendly eyes came off. Speaking of eyes, if the little girl could have, her own eyes would have widened at the sight of Toy Chica about to spring upon her unsuspecting prey.

Suzy was used to breaking down and crying in bad situations. It was a miracle that she found the strength to push all that fear away for even just a few moments to sprint forward and push past the nightmarish chicken to get to the guard first. Jeremy was jolted awake and found himself being roughly seized by the faceless rabbit. Suzy kept running despite his struggling. She could think of just one plan: hide Jeremy before Toy Chica caught up to them. And the newer robot was bound to catch up to them soon, so they had to find a hiding place sooner. The nearest door led to the room where spare animatronic parts were kept. _Perfect! If wearing a mask fools the new robots, a whole costume should be even better!_ Suzy reasoned.

"Let me go! Help!" Suzy grabbed the nearest Freddy costume and proceeded to try to force Jeremy inside of it. He responded to her intentions by kicking her as hard as he could. Unfortunately for him, Brian/Freddy came in at that moment. _Don't you dare hurt my friend!_ he wanted to shout, but a static-filled scream came out of his broken voice box instead. Jeremy looked up and paled when he saw the second animatronic. Now even more desperate to escape the room, he did the worst thing he could do in his situation: try to kick Suzy away again. Brian rushed to defend his friend. Smacked away by the bear, the poor guard hit the ground hard. He looked up at his two attackers with wide eyes as he realized that this was going to be the end of him. From the doorway, Toy Chica silently watched the scene, perhaps wondering why the two animatronics weren't stuffing their catch into a costume, perhaps picturing the day and party ahead of her, or perhaps not thinking at all. Whatever the case, she suddenly began to shudder and abruptly turned around and walked out of the room.

An astonished Jeremy put it together quickly. "It's six o'clock," he said, hardly believing his luck. "You're not allowed to hurt me anymore!" He shakily got to his feet. "I did it! I survived six nights in hell!" He smiled triumphantly. "Hear that, you dumb robots? I made it! How do you like that? Ha!" Brian shot out a paw and grabbed the guard by the collar of his shirt. The celebrating instantly stopped. Having asserted his dominance, Brian let him go. Jeremy took a few fearful steps backward and then turned and sprinted out the door as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Are you ok?" asked Brian, depossessing.

"I'm fine," Suzy replied. "Bonnie's broken, but well built. I'm more worried that I might have hurt Jeremy."

"He'll be fine," muttered Brian.

* * *

One last day. One last party. Jeremy nervously stood by the stage. The three toys seemed innocent enough now, but he couldn't look at them without thinking about how they acted during the night. "They're not gonna hurt you, kid." Jeremy turned to see the man who had spoken: an adult in a standard purple security guard outfit identical to the one Jeremy was wearing at that moment. "They just moved you to the day shift, right? Jeremy, isn't it?" Jeremy nodded meekly. The man smiled. "I'm Phillip, the night guard before you. We're gonna be partners for today's day shift." He held out a hand and Jeremy shook it.

"Did they, um…"

"Move?" Phillip finished for him. "Yeah, call me insane but I'll swear till the day I die that those bots were trying to attack me."

The younger guard blinked in astonishment. "I thought I was crazy or something."

"Eh, well, maybe we're both crazy," Phillip elbowed him. "Too bad nobody's gonna believe us. Anyways, you got through your nights ok?"

Jeremy shuddered. "Actually…" He began telling the man what had happened.

"Oh my," Philip paled when the story was over. "Kid, are you ok? If they hurt you…" Oh boy. He had wanted to quit that nightmare job and never come back, but if some kid who wasn't even out of high school yet actually died because he had left a position open, well, he didn't want that, either. _Better you than me_ was his motto, but he didn't like wishing harm upon anyone.

"I'm fine. I almost wasn't, though."

"You sure you're alright? Do you need some water or anything?" Jeremy shook his head in response. "You sure? Ok, well, I guess there's not much that can help if you were just a little roughed up," he sighed. "But seriously, they tried to stuff you inside a costume?"

"It's about as crazy as everything else we're talking about."

"Eh, well, you shouldn't have had to go through that." He pitied the poor soul who was going to take their job tonight, especially now that he knew what was in store for him or her. This person wouldn't even know the danger before it was too late. Well, life wasn't fair. What could he do, take the job again himself? Heck no! Still, maybe there was some way he could help.

"Kid, they can call me crazy," he sighed, "but I think people deserve to know a little about what this company's hiding. About how they treat their night guards and stuff."

"I thought you just said that nobody is going to believe us."

"They probably won't," he shrugged. "Still, it'll start a few rumors. I say we could use a little revenge for all that minimum wage hell we had to go through. You know, damage this place's reputation, turn off a few people looking for jobs, maybe even revive those investigations that were going on a while back."

"You go do that." He yawned. Whoever said that fifteen minute naps were refreshing did not know what they were talking about. "I think I need to sit down for a moment."

"Eh, well, just make sure the boss doesn't catch you taking a break. Kid's Cove was pretty empty last I checked. You go there and I'll cover for you," he winked. Jeremy smiled gratefully and entered the room that was usually swimming in toddlers. He leaned against the wall as far away from Mangle as he could and savored the quiet.

A group of toddlers swarmed in. Their parents followed, keeping a close watch. The manager moved with the group, trying to explain to them how safe his animatronics were.

 _Scanning… Scanning… Processing..._ Mangle raised her head when one small child began chewing on her ear. Her face scanners, damaged by days of being played with, began picking up things that weren't there.

A kid tried to climb up Jeremy's leg, successfully waking him up in the process. Realizing that his boss was in the same room as him, the young guard hastily tried to look like he hadn't just been asleep. The manager didn't notice, but Philip did. The second guard walked into the room to wake his partner before he was inevitably caught taking a break. He looked from his boss to his coworker. Jeremy folded his arms and nodded in the direction of the manager. Philip shrugged. Mangle turned her head towards Jeremy.

Looking back, most people would agree that what happened next in that room was one of the defining moments of 1987. The broken fox's malfunctioning face scanners suddenly identified the nearest adult as an escaped criminal. Unfortunately for Jeremy, that person happened to be him. With a static-filled growl, Mangle pulled herself up to hang from the ceiling. Philip's eyes widened. He pushed several children out of the way to try to reach his unsuspecting coworker. A toddler began crying when the man accidentally stepped on the toy he was playing with. The boy's mother turned her head to console her child and saw the mechanical fox poised to strike. Mangle launched herself forward, mouth full of sharp teeth open and ready to bite. Jeremy heard a faint whirring sound behind him before Philip pushed him out of the way, the older guard dropping to the safety of the floor as well. The toddler's mother screamed and pushed the parents nearest to her out of harm's way. There was only one person still in the path of danger.

"I assure you, these animatronics are perfectly safe -" The manager took one unsteady step backward and then fell over. The front part of his head was completely gone. Mangle twitched feverishly a foot away, her teeth covered in blood.

Needless to say, Freddy's was going to shut down for a little while.


	16. Chapter 16

**Ah the custom night. Level 20 all around! Of course, the difficulty setting can go two ways.**

"Well, Mr. Bear, you're looking nice today. Getting ready to walk around tonight? Well, I hope there're no hard feelings between us if I don't take any chances." Fritz began unscrewing Toy Freddy's back panel. "No hard feelings, Mr. Bear," he repeated as a wire snapped. "You're going to be scrapped anyway."

The new night guard checked the clock. 11:50. Plenty of time. He clipped a few more wires on the motionless bear and then moved on to his next robotic victim. When he was satisfied with his tampering, he went into the office and sat down, completely safe.

"The new Freddy and his friends were walking around at night? Why didn't I get to see that before Mr. Fritz broke them?" Katie whined. Timothy was watching Toy Bonnie uneasily, creeped out that the robots who had been so friendly during the day could have tried to murder somebody at night. Nathaniel was once again cursing himself for not being there, both for the kids and for the night watchman who had so very nearly lost his life. Nate was sure that he could have done something, but once again he had left everyone to fend for themselves. What was wrong with him? Well, it was high time he learned from his mistakes. From now on, he vowed, he would always be there for the ones who needed him.

"So, the place is closing," Timothy started. "The new animatronics are getting scrapped, the building is going to be knocked down and replaced with a fast food joint or something, and the original robots are being put into storage because nobody wants to buy them. There isn't anything left for us here. Shouldn't we be at the stars by now?"

Nathaniel found himself avoiding his friend's gaze. How was he going to tell him that he didn't know when they were going to get to move on? He was really regretting saying that about the stars. It had started off as something to give Timmy hope that things would get better, to pretend to know that they were going to have a happy ending in the face of an unknown fate, but then Timmy had believed it and then the kids had believed it and even Nate had found himself believing it. It was just something to hope for, but then it had become the only thing that they were hoping for. The lie had gone far enough.

"I don't know," he whispered.

Anything that resembled a smile on Timothy's face faded. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I mean I don't know what's going to happen to us." Nate's voice started to choke up with tears, but he went on. "I don't know where we're going to go or when we're going to go or if we're even going to get to go at all."

"But you said -"

"I lied, ok?! I lied about the stars! I made it all up so we wouldn't have to face it that none of us has any idea what the heck is going to happen!"

The effect was instantaneous. Every child stared up at him, speechless. Slowly Timothy turned away. "I can't believe it," he murmured in disbelief. "I actually trusted you. I actually thought that you were the first person who was nice to me. I… I thought that you cared about how I was feeling and that you wanted to protect me and keep me safe. But it was all just a big lie." Timothy spun around and stamped his foot as hard as he could. The fact that it just phased through the floor soundlessly did little to lessen the effect. "You LIED to all of us!" he shouted.

"Timmy, I-"

"You _what_? You're sorry you lied? You're sorry you -" Timothy's glare turned to pure hatred as he realized something. "You know perfectly well why we're still here, don't you? How could I have missed the obvious? Binding us all to the robots, you… you trapped us here! You just don't know how to move on so you won't let us have peace, either! That's it, isn't it?! You're the only thing standing between us and whatever peace we're supposed to be in! Well, you aren't sorry enough to let us go, are you?!"

"Actually I am!" exploded Nathaniel. "I am and I have tried to reverse what I did to you! To all of you! Well guess what, Timmy: nothing happened! Whatever's keeping you all here isn't me anymore! And I get it, I shouldn't have made up the thing about the stars, ok? You were just so upset and I was getting depressed and if felt like the right thing to do at the time. But then it turned into something we all actually believed and it seemed better than confronting that I didn't know how to get us out of here so I kept telling myself that it was right to keep telling you that that was going to happen and… … If I could go back in time and save everyone, I would. I can't, though. I can't go back, I can't move on, I can't do anything. I just get depressed and leave instead of being there and trying to help."

Timothy looked like he was about to respond, but instead he took a deep breath. He opened his mouth again but still said nothing. Closing his eyes, he very calmly announced, "I don't care that you're dead, Nate, because I am going to kill you." Then all fury was unleashed as he threw himself on top of the older boy and started smacking him repeatedly while screaming.

"Enough!" Katie shot into the air and with surprising strength, yanked the two combatants off each other. "You're acting like big babies!" she scolded, hovering and glaring down at them like some authority. "I've been around for less than half the time you two have and you're showing less maturity than a couple of fussy, squabbling toddlers!" Both boys cringed and looked down in shame. "We obviously have a problem, but fighting isn't going to solve it," she continued. "Nate shouldn't have lied to us. At least he told us the truth, though! Can we be reasonable, agree that he shouldn't have lied and better not do it again, and use what we just learned to try to find a way out of our situation instead of fighting? We only have our little group to work with and we all have the same problem, so can we work together instead of tearing each other apart?" She looked to each ghost. Every one of them nodded meekly.

"Good," she sighed, touching down on the ground. "Now that we're all settled, let's actually try to work something out. We know that just waiting isn't going to get us to move on to… wherever we're supposed to go. And Nate and these robots aren't keeping us here, so we need to figure out what is. Then we can all finally move on. Wait," she paused, "you all want to move on, right? Nobody wants to stay here?"

"I'm afraid," whimpered Joey. "If we're not going to the stars where everything's peaceful, then where are we moving on to?"

"We don't know," Katie shuffled her feet nervously, "but we can be sure that staying in this pizzeria isn't going to get us anywhere. Wherever we're going, I think we're supposed to go there. It's not like we're seeing any other ghosts, so dead people are supposed to move on. It's high time we figured out how to do the same."

"I don't want to move on alone," Brian said quietly. "I just don't know where we're going, and that's scary. I don't think I can go alone."

"We'll all move on together," Katie decided. "That way, none of us will have to face doing it alone. I know I won't leave until I know my brother can, too."

"I think I know why I'm here," Timothy offered. "At first, I didn't want to leave if Nate couldn't, and then I wanted to stay because of you, Katie. But ever since that man murdered everyone, I knew I couldn't leave until I was certain he couldn't hurt anyone else like he did with all of you."

"I think I'm here for the same reason," Nate put in. "I won't leave knowing that other kids might end up in our situation."

"So our plan is to send the murderer to jail where he can't hurt anyone ever again," Katie said. Everybody nodded, although the two eldest of the group wouldn't mind putting the murderer out of commission in a more permanent way. Of course, they weren't going to voice that opinion in front of a bunch of six-year-olds.

"The killer seems to be attracted to the Freddy's franchise," Nate started. "He got me outside the old diner, you kids at this place before it changed ownership, and he tried to strike again here. There's a fair chance that, if somebody else buys the old robots and sets up a new Freddy's, he'll come back. We'll be waiting for him."

"We can control the old Freddy and Co and use them to stop him!" nodded Timmy. "And when they're moved to storage, we can be controlling them so we can get moved, too! We'll find some way to sneak your Marionette with us, too."

"Then that's the plan." Katie gave a hopeful smile. "We know what to do. All that's left is to wait."

 **And there ends everything pertaining to the second game. I know that this chapter was short, but it had a transition that needed to be there and a few loose ends that had to be wrapped up before the next part comes. Anyway, hopefully it was good and the next chapter should be longer. And a happy early Easter to all. If you don't celebrate it, have a nice day anyway.**


	17. Chapter 17

Henry had always been the failure child. His grades weren't the best, his room was always a mess, and he had to receive constant lectures from his father about how he had better start caring if he wanted to take over the family business one day. Henry the child had dutifully nodded, tried to pay attention in class a little more, and eventually slipped right back into old habits. He'd never expected to get a rival.

Timothy had always been the perfect child. His grades were at the top of the class, he kept all his toys in neat little piles, and he was always receiving glowing praise from his father when the man was home. Naturally, he was a much better candidate to take on the family business. Naturally, Henry hated him for it. Seeing Timmy smile as he handed their parents a perfect kindergarten report card made young Henry glare with envy. When was the last time anyone had praised him like that? Never, that's when. The jealousy became unbearable when his father had bestowed the gift of four new plushy toys upon the little child. Henry certainly wasn't interested in stuffed animals, but the fact that his father had given Timothy something like that when Henry had never received anything from his father except on birthdays was a great injustice to the older brother.

It had felt good to make Timothy cry that night. It was justice to knock him down a few pegs, right? The older brother had asserted himself as the one on top. And since that night, Henry had used his younger sibling as an outlet to channel his anger into. He held every bit of luck the little boy had against him and made him pay for it, all the while not noticing that Timothy was not nearly as fortunate as Henry claimed he was. Nightly he wished that his whiny little pest would just disappear. And one day, his wish was granted.

Flipping through the "help wanted" pages of the newspaper, Henry fingered the old photo of his little brother and remembered that final day in the diner. The shock when Fredbear's jaws snapped shut, the horror as they had rushed the bloody little boy to the hospital, the pure, unrestrained sadness at seeing him lying all bandaged up. One brother knelt by the other's side, pleading for something to reverse what had happened. Nothing did. The heart monitor had gone flat despite Henry's apologies. His wish granted, he was once again an only child.

Henry sighed and scanned through the list of available jobs. He found himself instead opening the bottom drawer of the desk and carefully picking the stack of pictures up from it to set down on the table. These photos were all he had left of his siblings. His parents had trashed almost everything that mentioned Timmy's existence after the boy had died. Only what Henry had managed to save was still around, and every one of those pictures was in that precious little stack in front of him. His parents didn't want it. Their way to deal with it was by trying to forget that their son had ever existed. Life had to go on and the past couldn't be constantly mourned, especially when there was another child on the way.

Katie was the new perfect child. Charming, sweet, and unquestionably cute, the little girl found a place in everybody's hearts. Henry would have loved her anyway. He had learned from his horrible mistake. He was going to be a good older brother. His father might still be lecturing him about his grades, but Henry didn't take a thing out on his precious little sister. He was being a good older brother, kind and encouraging, gentle and good. Sometimes he would look up at the sky and imagine that Timothy was watching him from a better place. _I'm sorry_ , Henry would imagine himself telling his little brother, _I should have never done those things to you. But I've changed. I'm good now. I wish I could have been this way for you. I'm sorry I couldn't realize it until too late._ Then Timothy would smile and fade away. Henry hoped that he was doing what his little brother would have wanted. He was trying his best to be the good big brother that he had never been for Timothy. Henry couldn't change what he had done in the past, but he was sure that he was doing the right thing in the present. Katie was growing up to be healthy, smart, and beautiful. Her future looked bright and wonderful.

Katie never got that future. Henry had been out with friends that afternoon, watching a movie. He had walked out of the theatre, laughing and chatting, and parted with the group to head off to Freddy's, a present for his sister in his hands. How could he have expected the sight that met him when he arrived at his father's restaurant?

Who the hell had done this?! What kind of a sick, sick person -? Henry fought his way to Katie. He needed to get to her, no, she couldn't, not Katie, Katie couldn't… There was blood all over everywhere, banishing any hopes that the child was merely sleeping. Henry lost the will to resist the policeman pulling him away. As the crowd of parents surged forward, blocking the scene, all the young man could think of was how his sister must have felt during her last few moments. He numbly looked around. The only other person not joining in the fight to get to the children was his father. The man was staring up at the ceiling, blinking every few seconds. Henry had seen the same look in his father's eyes the day that the doctor had shaken his head at the side of Timothy's hospital bed. The man had already started the process of burying the memories of his daughter, just as he had with Timothy. In the present, Henry turned the page of the newspaper and gently picked up a photo of Katie smiling and holding up her little stuffed Vixie toy. The short stack of photographs was all that was left of her. The rest - her little dresses, VHS tapes of her playing, that favorite stuffed fox of hers - all of it had been burned.

The stack of memories went back into its little box on the shelf and the newspaper was once again being looked through. Crying over events that had happened years ago could be done after he found a decent job. He had to pull himself together now that he was on his own. It wasn't as if he hadn't expected his parents to finally kick him out. There was no family business to pass on to him, at any rate, and they had always been disappointed with his grades and just about everything else their oldest child tried to accomplish. Expected or not, Henry had still flinched when his father had made it clear that he was not going to continue supporting his adult son. The young man had left his parents' house with a few sets of clothes, some money his mother had slipped into his jacket pocket, and of course the photographs of his little brother and sister. As he had set off, Henry had said one final goodbye to his father. The look in the older man's eyes was the same as the one he had worn when Timmy and Katie had died. Henry knew that he was no longer welcome in the home of the man who already saw him as gone.

Darn his grades for giving him such crappy job options. Worker at the Freshy Mart? No, that was too far to walk every day. Clerk at the gas station? Er, the last few issues of the newspaper had contained articles about gas station minimarts getting armed robbers. Henry read on. He needed to find something; the streets didn't sound nearly as friendly as this apartment and they were a very real possibility if he didn't secure a job and pay the rent within the week. All the jobs on the list were too far away to walk, though, except -

Henry froze. The face of a bear he was all too familiar with grinned up at him from the paper. Somebody had bought the rights to his dad's old restaurant, patched up the old versions of the robots, and was hiring for the night shift. The place was close by, the pay wasn't worse than any of the other offered jobs, and there was nothing to complain about as far as necessary experience was concerned. But still, it had to be Freddy's. Why did it have to be Freddy's? Even if it wasn't the same location as the one he was familiar with, the place probably reeked with memories of children long gone. If nothing else, it would be embarrassing to show up as a minimum wage night guard at a place his father used to own. It was pretty much his only option though, unless he wanted to walk a mile two times a day, so like it or not he had to take it.

* * *

"Are you to drop off for a party or are you making a reservation for one?" the front desk lady asked impatiently.

"Actually, I'm looking to respond to a job offer I saw in the paper," said Henry. He hoped he looked acceptable enough to at least be considered for the position.

"Name?" the woman asked, scribbling something down on a piece of paper.

"Um, it's Henry Fazworth. I can -"

"You're hired."

"Wait, there isn't going to be an interview or a background check or -"

"Come in at five tonight for a prep and info session if you want the job," the woman rolled her eyes. "Now if you would kindly move out of the way, there are customers behind you."

Henry exited the Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria with a frown. The place looked like a total dump and the first employee he had met had been extremely rude. Still, he wasn't going to complain if this was going to get him a paycheck. Perhaps he would have thought differently if he had known that the job that he was about to take had never been held for longer than a week.

* * *

In the daytime, Freddy's looked like a run down party place. At night, however, it shed whatever friendliness it appeared to have under the light of the day and instead took on a creepy atmosphere. Henry stared up at the building and shivered. He wasn't sure of what to expect from being a night guard and the so-called "prep and info" session had been more of a "come in at twelve tonight here's a uniform you can borrow and by the way I'll be leaving you a script to record yourself reading from so I can play it to other newbies and it's a great idea because it'll shorten this already short meeting on terms of info I have to give you and by the way speaking of info I'm not giving you any so get out" session than something he actually learned from. This was his job, though, so he knew that he better start at least tolerating it. He straightened the purple sleeve of the security guard outfit that had been supplied to him and put his hand on the door.

"Good luck in there." Henry wheeled around to see a man about the same age as him standing in the otherwise empty parking lot. "You're the new security guard, right? Henry's your name? Good luck, then," the man said.

"Why would I need luck? And who are you?" Henry asked.

"Oh, just a guy who likes hanging around kiddie party places." He laughed at Henry's shocked expression. "Nah, I just walk past this place to get home. Got some friends who work here, tell me stuff from time to time. Gossip, new employee names, just little things like that. The name's Mike, by the way. Mike Schmidt."

"Ok, um, nice to meet you." Henry was starting to feel a little uncomfortable around the overly friendly man.

"The same to you. Good luck in there. You know, not all rumors are things you want to brush off."

"What do you mean?" Henry frowned.

"Oh, it's probably nothing. The after hours just make people jumpy, see things that aren't real. A little good luck never caused any harm, though." Mike winked and walked away, leaving Henry standing by the door alone. _What a weird conversation_ , the guard thought to himself, but he didn't have time to ponder it. His watch was beeping 11:55. His shift was about to begin.


	18. Chapter 18

**So, my mother apparently read and reviewed this last chapter. I guess you're reading this, too, Mom. Thanks for reading and I'm glad you like it! (Nothing is safe) And of course, thank you to everybody else whose reading this and I'm glad you all like it, too!**

"Let me guess," Nate sighed when Lucy floated through the wall and into the room. "We have another night guard to deal with, don't we?" The eternal teen was lounging as the Marionette in the sealed off off-camera room. Fredbear was slumped over a few feet away, propped up against the Spring Bonnie suit that had been taken to rot alongside his old stage partner.

"When the heck is this manager going to quit hiring people so we can finally deal with the murderer once and for all?" Timmy kicked the air. "I saw him again tonight. He just stands outside, mocking us! I swear, the moment he comes in I'll be so ready for him he won't even know what hit him!"

"Yeah, well, we won't be doing much of anything until these guards stop coming," Nate reminded him. The boy got quiet. It was impossible to forget the first time the murderer had come to the new Freddy's. He had appeared to be unarmed, but the kids would have been fools if they had believed that he was actually defenseless. He obviously had something up his sleeve, and his past victims were ready to face whatever it was. The past months had been spent preparing for their final confrontation, coming up with plans for how to take their justice. As discussions filled the empty hours of the day and night, the younger children began to realize that a solution that did not involve violence might not be possible. Detaining the killer would be useless when a group of robotic animals couldn't exactly take anybody to court, and with getting him locked up was out of the question, there wasn't really any other way to make sure that he wouldn't hurt anybody else. But when it came down to their final confrontation, Nate promised to spare his young friends the horror of having to take somebody's life and do the deed by himself.

Unfortunately for their plans, the night guard had done his job and wouldn't allow anybody to come to even the parking lot without a threat of calling the police on the intruder. The kids hadn't gotten their revenge and the murder hadn't gotten rid of his victims in whatever way he had been planning to. An outside confrontation had not been possible, either, as the children had discovered when the robots had locked up all movement the moment they tried to get farther than a few dozen feet outside the front door. Even Fredbear was bound to teleporting within the confines of the pizzeria. Some mechanism must have been installed in them to prevent their "free roaming" from getting them into trouble.

The logical solution to their predicament had been to scare the guard into quitting. A little bit of movement from Bonnie and Chica had sent him out of the building at 6:00 and never to return. With nobody to prevent their confrontation, both the murderer and the murdered children prepared to settle things once and for all. They had found someone new sitting in the guard room. It didn't seem to matter what they did; another person always showed up. Nathaniel had no clue where the manager was getting these people from, but they were seriously becoming annoying to deal with. It had been three months since the place had opened and there still seemed to be no end to them. Both the children and their murderer were getting impatient. Nate feared that if this went on much longer, his opponent would try to speed up the process of removing the position of night watchman by bloodying his hands, even though that could risk him getting checked by the police. Nate certainly hoped that the only death awaiting the pizzeria was the murderer's (although the last person to be a guard had been a thrill-seeking weirdo with such a foul mouth that after five whole nights with him Nate had been half wishing that he could get rid of the man himself).

"You guys know what to do. I'm hanging out with Nate tonight," Timothy waved Lucy away. The small girl nodded and disappeared through the wall. Katie watched the place through which she had exited for a few seconds before taking a seat next to her brother.

* * *

Henry pushed his chair in and looked down at the desk. There was a monitor for the cameras, which was to be expected, and a little note on top of a piece of paper. He picked it up to read it. _Should have thought of this a long time ago. It'll save an explanation to any more newbies. Please record yourself reading script 2 make tapes 4 future use. Thanks, management._ It took Henry a minute to figure out how to work the tape recorder, and soon he was reading the introductory message that was printed on the script.

"Hello, hello? Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night. Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I'm finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact." Well, that wasn't true, but that was what the script said. Henry assumed that it would be more comforting to a newbie if he thought he was hearing something from an experienced worker.

Henry made his way through the boring introduction. There was a slightly unnerving part about responsibility for damage, but knowing the history of the company, Henry supposed that it was necessary for it to cover itself. Nothing was too out of the ordinary until the second paragraph. He was starting to skip some stupid parts that would bore a listener into quitting, so he was surprised when a line caught his attention. He slowed and went back to reading the script unabridged. "Uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit quirky at night." What did it mean by "quirky?" Weren't they shut off? His question was answered a few sentences later. Apparently, they were in some sort of night mode that let them move around, which was weird but Henry didn't think that it was too big of a problem until—

 _Wait WHAT?!_ Henry practically couldn't restrain himself from shouting as he read the next sentence. What kind of a stupid prank were these people trying to pull on him?! He did NOT need to have that imagery in his head. What-?! Well, someone in the management was probably having a good laugh right about now. That message was definitely going to frighten some new guards. Henry couldn't help taking a quick, nervous glance at the stage camera. Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica were standing in their proper places, just like they should. Henry scolded himself for being so easily scared and went back to reading the script. He finished up the recording with a warning to conserve the power (being powerless and in the dark was something to actually be afraid of) and an off-script promise to talk the next night with whoever was going to hear his recording. He'd apologize for that stupid prank message and besides, it would add something for him to look forward to doing the next night. This job seemed pretty boring; even a one sided conversation would be better than staring at cameras for six hours.

Henry stopped the recording and leaned back in his chair. Well, time for a long night. He absentmindedly flipped through the cameras. When he reached the one trained on the stage, he gasped in shock. Bonnie was GONE. The more than a little nervous guard checked the rest of the cameras and squeaked in terror when he found the rabbit standing in the left hallway. "No no no no," Henry tried to regain his breath. The message wasn't a prank. It was absolutely real and there were a bunch of murder bots coming after him. "Oh gosh oh gosh oh shoot." He had to think! The doors! Henry slammed the button to close the left door. Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, however, he remembered the power. Feeling sick, he lit up the window. The rabbit wasn't there anymore, thank his lucky stars. The right hallway, on the other hand, wasn't so empty.

Henry had no idea how he managed to make it to six AM. Both animatronics returned to their stage and the daytime employees started coming in. Henry deemed it safe to leave. He glumly wished that he didn't have to wait five nights for his paycheck.

* * *

"You're actually coming back?" a surprised Mike asked when he saw the guard walking up the parking lot.

"Mike! Do you know- Bonnie and Chica- have you heard- ?"

"They move and try to kill you? I've heard rumors," the man shrugged. "Eh, some are true, some are false. I know that there was this guy at an old location who swore that they tried to stuff him into one of their costumes. The guy before him backed up everything the kid said. Since then that's been the general belief. The bots here are the same ones as the ones he was freaking out about, you know? They're all fixed, though." He leaned against a street light. "Most people quit after one night, you know, since they stopped giving that stupid contract. The thrill seekers last a little longer. It's like surviving a week before quitting is something to brag about. What made you come back?"

"I need the money and I don't get paid until the end of the week," Henry grumbled, embarrassed.

"Eh, well, that's what makes the world go round," Mike shrugged. "Best of luck to you, then. A bit of advice to you: keep some power, Freddy likes to sneak around when it's out." He gave Henry a quick thumbs up and then was off. Henry looked up at the entrance doors and sighed. Another night was about to start.

* * *

"The guard is back," Joey reported.

"You go have fun with him," Timmy waved the boy away. He went back to braiding his sister's hair. Joey shrugged and went off to get Foxy. It wasn't every night that he was allowed to run down the hallways.

Henry was none too happy to see another animatronic out to get him that night. Freddy hadn't moved, though, but that didn't hold any promises for the upcoming nights. Maybe the animatronics got more active as the week went on and more of them started moving on later nights. He passed that information on in the phone message he recorded that night. It might save the next person taking the job after Henry _quit, not died! No no no he wasn't going to die he had plenty of power left and he was going to make it he just had to find another job and keep this one until he did._ The assurance gave him little comfort.

He went back to his one sided conversation with the tape recorder, adding advice to the message as the night went on and he learned how the animatronics behaved. He passed on Mike's advice about Freddy coming when the power went out, as well as some things he figured out on his own like the fact that the cameras had blind spots (He had discovered that one by accident and boy had it been a terrifying shock!) and how the Foxy that hadn't gotten fixed up like the rest of the gang would run up the hallway to bang on the door.

Eventually, the church bells chimed the first toll of the day: 6:00. Henry's shift was over. He had made it through another night. Sighing, he pushed the front door open and made his way across the filling parking lot. This night had been a nightmare.

* * *

Everyone was surprised that Henry came back for a third night. Mike advised him to get a safer job. Henry sighed and replied that he was looking but he wouldn't quit this one until he got paid. He'd worked two nights and he sure as heck wasn't going to leave without getting compensated for his troubles. The rent needed to get paid soon, after all, and switching to another job now wouldn't earn him enough by the end of the week to cover that cost. And then he had said goodbye to the man and started his shift.

Brian was allowed to join in that night. He was sure that adding Freddy into the mix would frighten the guard into quitting. Henry definitely was afraid, but he wasn't going to stop coming to work until the paycheck was in his hand. Taking a deep breath for courage, he sat down and pressed the record button. If these messages were going to be played by the night, then he would be talking to someone on their third. He or she must be either desperate or love dangerous thrills. "Hello, hello? Hey! You're doing great! Most people don't last this long," he started. That did _not_ sound the way it was supposed to have. "I mean, you know, they usually move on to other things by now. I'm not implying that they died," he tried to correct his mistake. "Th-that's not what I meant." Ok, this was sounding worse and worse. He better quit that topic before he said something else that was stupid. He laughed nervously. These nights were really getting to him.

"Hey, listen!" he told the tape recorder, coming up with something. "I had an idea! If you happen to get caught and want to avoid getting stuffed into a Freddy suit, uh, try playing dead! You know, go limp. Then there's a chance that, um, maybe they'll think that you're an empty costume instead. Then again, if they think you're an empty costume, they might try to…" Oh shoot. He realized the flaw with his idea. "Um, they might try to stuff a metal skeleton into you. Yeah, never mind, scratch that. It's best just not to get caught." Welp, he'd just created some imagery that neither he nor any other guard on their third night wanted to think about. Maybe he should just stop talking. He gave a quick goodbye and then went back to focusing on his job. Hopefully the flip side would be the morning, not something else that he didn't want to think about.

He'd left the camera monitor on. How could he have been so stupid as to leave the cameras on! He had left them open when he didn't need them and they had drained the power to 1%! There were five minutes until the end of the night, a chance that he could make it, but how could he have been so careless?! He remembered Mike's warning about Freddy coming when the power ran out and shivered. Five minutes. Maybe if he struggled enough, he could waste enough time that 6:00 would come before he could be stuffed. Still, five minutes was a lot of time to waste when all Freddy had to do was drag him a few rooms away.

0% power. Four minutes left. All the lights went off and Henry was left alone in the quiet darkness.

Katie stretched and smoothed her skirt. The telltale hum of electricity had stopped, signaling that the power had run out. She didn't like seeing people get scared, especially if they cussed a lot when they were nervous, but she couldn't help admitting that she liked listening to the little tune that Freddy always played before chasing the guard out of the building. It made her think of fairies dancing in a beautiful forest clearing under a bright, full moon. Simply magical.

Katie hovered in the left hallway behind Freddy. Twirling around in carefree bliss, she was slightly disappointed when 6:00 made her friend stop his music. Brian shrugged and lumbered down the hallway to return to the stage, sharing a wave with the ghost girl when he passed her. Katie sighed and got ready to follow him. She heard the footsteps of the all-too-ready-to-leave guard behind her. _Maybe he'll leave for good this time_ , she thought. She shuddered as he walked right through her. The guard paused at the end of the hallway. "Shoot, left my apartment key in the office," she heard him grumble before he turned around. Katie gasped, so shocked that she didn't even close her eyes when he passed through her again. That… That was _Henry_!

 **Well, there we go. I looked up Phone Guy's quotes and I rewatched Markplier's videos so hopefully there aren't too many inaccuracies as far as power levels per time are concerned. And I have officially ruined myself because I now cannot wait for Phone Guy to get caught on night 4. =]**


	19. Chapter 19

**My brother is back to reading this and the day is fine, so enjoy this relatively happy chapter before things have to get serious again. =)**

Night 4 couldn't be that bad. After all, Henry had faced all four animatronics the previous night, so it wasn't like they could throw anything new at him, right? He was so, so, so terribly wrong.

Katie was spinning through walls, hovering excitedly next to each of her friends as she waited for her chance to be reunited with her oldest brother. Of course, the doors slammed shut whenever any of them tried to get close.

Impatiently, she glided off to the back room to help Nate persuade Timothy that he should go to Henry. The boy was uneasy about seeing the person who had shoved his head into Fredbear's mouth and made every second of his time before that into a nightmare, but Katie knew that she could convince him to accept the Henry who she had grown up with. He was nothing like the cruel person he had once been; Katie just had to convince Timmy that their brother had changed from what the nine-year-old remembered him to be.

It was only 12:30 and the relentless assault was already getting Henry to slip up. Twice already he had checked the doors to find Chica and Bonnie a second away from jumping into the office. He wasn't sure how much longer he would be able to take this. It certainly wasn't long enough to get him to 6:00.

That was it then. He was going to die at the paws of a band of kid-friendly robots his father used to own. It was funny in a way, he supposed, though hardly something he would laugh at. Thinking about his impending death wasn't something he wanted to focus his last few moments on. Reaching across the desk, he turned on the tape recorder to make one final message.

"Hello, hello? Hey! Hey, wow, day 4. I knew you could do it," he cracked a smile, hoping that night four wouldn't end the same way for whoever was going to listen to his message as it had for him. "Uh, hey, um, listen, I may not be around to send you a message tomorrow." Chica knocked loudly on the right door, trying to force it open. Bonnie was camping firmly on the other side. "It's-It's been a bad night here for me. Um, I-I'm kinda glad that I recorded my messages for you," his voice started to crack, "when, um, when I did."

"Fine! I'll do it, but I'm not going to like seeing him." Timmy folded his arms and finally agreed to get into Fredbear so he and Katie could teleport into the guard room.

Katie squealed out of joy and clapped her hands. "Hey wait, guys," Nate realized something. "You won't be able to have much of a reunion if you can't talk to him." Katie sighed in frustration as she realized he was right. Some conversation that would be if Fredbear's voice box was just as broken as it had been for the past several years. Nate wouldn't allow his little friend to be so unhappy. He faded out to control the Marionette. Carefully, the puppet began fiddling with the back of his head and surprised both children when he pulled off a piece of himself. Kneeling over Fredbear, Nate took off the golden animatronic's head and plugged the device into the nest of wires near one of the ears. "You need that voice box more than I do," he smiled, appearing next to them.

"Thank you thank you thank you!" Katie jumped up and hugged him. "Able to talk or not, you're coming with us, Nate!" she squealed, pushing him towards the now mute puppet. Timmy gave them both a little nod and then he and Katie took their friend's hand and got ready to teleport.

Meanwhile, inside the security office, Henry was thinking about how much he was going to scream when he finally got caught. Too nervous to keep sitting, he stood up and began circling around the desk. The steady rhythm helped him compose himself enough to keep talking. "Uh, hey, do me a favor," he told the tape recorder. He was pretty sure the other animatronics had joined their friends because the banging grew louder. "Maybe sometime, um, you could check inside those suits in the back room?" It wouldn't be long now. Maybe a miracle would happen and he would take more than five hours to bleed to death? Probably not. "I'm going to try to hold out until someone checks. Maybe it won't be so bad." Who was he trying to kid? He was going to get scratched and poked to death. There was no way that that could ever be 'not so bad.' "Uh, I-I-I-I always wondered what was in all those empty heads back there." Probably a lot of wires and soon, him.

"You know," he started to say, but he lost whatever he was going to tell the recorder as a broken, yellow Freddy materialized out of the air before him. That… there was no way he could have anticipated that. A masked humanoid robot was holding the bear's hand. Letting go, it walked over to one side and the bear went to the other to press the buttons to open the doors. Henry swallowed hard. "Oh, no -"

"Gosh that was crowded!" gasped a relieved Joey. At least, he wanted to say that. Foxy's unfixed voice box decided not to cooperate with the sudden excitement, so instead of words, he emitted a static-filled scream. Surprised by his own outburst, Joey jumped and his hook snagged the underside of the desk, tipping it up. Everything on it, including the tape recorder, slid off and fell to the floor. It gave a mechanical whine and the tape stopped turning, cutting off the recording feed of what was happening in the room. Henry got a tiny flicker of relief out of knowing that at least all the screaming that was certain to accompany his death wouldn't be recorded. Of course, that relief was instantly overpowered by absolute terror as six killer robots crowded around him.

The teleporting golden bear took a step closer to him. Henry took a step backwards. He felt the wall. The bear took another step forward. Henry flinched, unable to get any farther away.

"Henry!" The man's eyes widened. The decrepit robot could talk? And it knew his name? It swayed unsteadily and it's mouth formed the closest thing it could to a smile. "Henry! It's me!"

"I told you he wouldn't know it's us." The golden bear was still talking, but it didn't seem to be talking to Henry. It was… arguing with itself?

"I knew he wouldn't know that just by looking at us. Do you think I'm stupid, Timmy?"

"I think it's stupid that you thought Henry would jump up and hug us the second we came into the room."

"I did _not_ think that! I just said I wished that would happen!"

The puppetlike robot it had come in with waved a hand in front of the bear's face to get its attention. The golden Freddy stopped arguing with itself. "Sorry," it grumbled, embarrassed. It turned its attention back to Henry, much to the man's terror. "Oh come on. We're not _that_ scary," the bear said to him. If it had eyes, Henry was sure that it would have rolled them.

"Wait, were we scaring you?!" the bear's jaw dropped. It took the clearly terrified Henry as an answer. "Oh no! I-I'm so sorry!"

"What do you want with me?" the cornered man asked nervously.

The bear tilted its head to the side. "There's no easy way to explain this, is there?" The puppet robot shook its head. The bear shrugged. "Ok then, I guess we'll just say it. Henry, it's me: Katie. Timmy's in here, too. We're controlling old Fredbear!"

"Basically we're ghosts and we've been hanging around this place ever since the old Freddy's got shut down." The bear's voice was the same, but it's tone was much more frustrated, as if it didn't want to explain this.

"Timmy? Is that you?" Henry asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Yep. That's what Katie said, right? I'm walking around in the bearbot you shoved my head into." Henry flinched a little and Timmy let out another huffy sigh. "Katie's got split control of him, in case you couldn't figure that out. The kids who got killed with her are those guys," he pointed to the four animatronics who were standing in an excited huddle behind him, "and that's Nate." The puppet robot gave a little wave. "The guy who murdered Katie and the kids got him outside the old Fredbear diner a month or so before my birthday. _That_ birthday," he repeated as if he needed to clarify. "So, any questions that don't require me giving a detailed explanation of how we came back as ghosts or possessed robots?"

This was too much. His brother and sister and ghosts and... wow. Questions. He had so many and yet he didn't know what to ask. Was this even real? He ended up blurting out the first thing that came to his mind. "Did you ever stuff anybody into a costume?" he asked weakly.

The group stared at him. "I really didn't mean it!" Bonny piped up. The story was recounted and Henry found himself smiling when it was over. To think, he and countless other people had been scared over such a simple misunderstanding. It was actually pretty funny.

The next few hours were spent telling stories and laughing. Nate had volunteered to entertain the kids while his two friends talked with their brother. Though it was strange to have a conversation with two people who shared the same body, Henry was able to discern between the two different voices and besides, being with his lost brother and sister was so wonderful that he didn't care how abnormal the circumstances were. The three siblings were all together as they had never been before and it was pure bliss to sit at one of the tables of the empty party room and just chat. The only subject that wasn't allowed to be discussed was murder; the serious conversations could wait until the next night. This was their reunion and they were not about taint the mood by talking about what had torn their family apart.

"So, Henry, are you married? Do you have kids? Are they my age? Can I meet them?" Katie peppered him with questions.

"Um, sorry but no," her older brother blushed. "I'm barely able to keep a roof over my head. A family of my own isn't really something I could support, and I don't even know any women."

"You should stay with us!" she squealed with delight. "We could hide you and you could eat pizza every night!"

Henry smiled at his little sister's suggestion. "Sorry, but I don't think my boss would like that idea too much. I've got an apartment, don't worry."

"But you could sneak in and the manager wouldn't even have to know," Katie whined. Puppy dog eyes weren't exactly something Fredbear's empty black eyeholes were able to do, but she tried all the same.

"This conversation is getting too stupid for me," Timmy grumbled. "I'll be backstage if you need me."

Henry waited for Fredbear to get up. When the animatronic didn't move, he called, "Timmy? Are you still there?"

"He just walked away a few moments ago," Katie replied.

"I didn't see him, though."

"Well of course you didn't," she shrugged. "He left as a ghost. Nobody can see us when we're ghosts. Here, I'll stand next to you." Fredbear slumped over and Henry looked around. Nobody was next to him. "See what I mean?" she asked, the bear suddenly coming back to life. "Only ghosts can see other ghosts. Although," she added thoughtfully, "I actually could see Timmy and Nate while I was still alive."

"Your imaginary friends," Henry remembered. "Wow. Just wow. I can't believe I didn't listen to you. Maybe if I had…"

"That wouldn't have changed anything," Katie shook her head. "And me seeing them wasn't something that you could just shrug and accept. Other kids my age had imaginary friends who were actually imaginary, and I had a lot of made up fantasy worlds, too. Seeing two invisible playmates didn't sound too believable."

"You, Katie, are the voice of reason," Henry declared.

"Thanks," she giggled. A chiming bell began to sound somewhere outside. Katie frowned. "It's six o'clock already. I guess it's time for you to go."

Wow. The time had just flown by. The cooks and waiters and waitresses would be coming in soon, and boy did he not want to be there when the rude front desk lady walked through the door. "I'll come back tomorrow night," Henry promised. "After all, it is my job."

"We'll be waiting," Katie smiled before pulling her brother into a crushing hug. "Well, I guess I'd better get Timmy so we can drop Fredbear off at the room he's supposed to be in. It wouldn't be too nice to have some employees find him outside of a sealed off room. They might think he teleported," she giggled.

Henry nodded and said goodbye his sister. He smiled as he stepped out into the crisp morning air. For the first time in his career at Freddy's, he was looking forward for midnight to come.


	20. Chapter 20

"…and so we've been scaring guards for the past three months," Timmy finished. The three siblings were once again sitting together in the party room. The rest of the children were seated around them, listening to their story which was being recounted for Henry. Nate popped in and out of ghost form to volunteer details that the others could tell the man.

"Gosh, I never would have thought…" Henry shook his head, "I don't even know what to say… I'm sorry. I wish I could have helped you."

"We're together now at least," Katie tried to make her oldest brother feel better.

"Although," Timmy cut in, "I don't know how long we can stay that way. We have to stop the murderer and move on."

"But we just got back together! It isn't fair!" cried Katie. "I don't want to leave if we have to tear our family apart again!"

"But Katie, we're supposed to go!" Brian complained. "You said so yourself! And I'm tired of being stuck here!" The other children quietly nodded.

"It's not fair, though! We just got back together!" She pounded a fist on the table. "I won't leave my brother again!"

"Listen Katie!" the guard grabbed her golden paw and settled it. "Katie, it's ok. You aren't meant to stay here forever." Though he felt that his next blink would produce tears, Henry managed a small smile. "You need to go on. You can't stay in this," he glanced around the room, "rotting pizzeria forever. There isn't anything left for you here."

"But you're here," she protested. Her gaze hovered over each of her friends. "You all can leave if you want. Timmy, I want you to go, too. You've been waiting long enough. But I have to stay."

"You are certainly not going to stay here." Henry's command made it clear that he would take no defiance. His voice became softer as he gave a tearful smile. "You need to go. Don't worry about me. Timmy won't have anyone to keep him company if you don't stay with him." Timmy started to mutter some retort at the slight jab, but decided to let his brother continue since Henry was helping him. "Grandma and Grandpa will be there. And remember Swimmy?"

"He was the best pet fish in the world," Katie said quietly.

"Well, I'm sure he's waiting for you, too, wherever you're supposed to go. Don't worry about leaving me. I'll join you, someday." He squeezed her paw and gave another tearful smile. Never would he have imagined that he'd be talking to his lost brother and sister again, and even less would he have believed that he'd be letting them go a second time.

"Don't worry, ok?" he told her. "And Timmy?" The younger boy grunted to show that he was listening. "Timmy, I'm sorry. For everything. I never got a chance to tell you that, but I need to now. I was an awful big brother and I made your life hell. I know I can't ask you to forgive me for that, but I just want you to know that if we could do it all over again, I wouldn't dream of treating you that way again. I'm sorry."

Fredbear tilted his head up, aloof. Suddenly, he stood up and pulled Henry into a hug. "I'll miss you," Timmy whispered.

The breath nearly crushed out of him, Henry did his best to return the embrace. "Take good care of yourselves, ok? I'll help in whatever way I can with your murderer."

"We have to stop wasting the little time we have being sad," Katie choked out. "Please, can't we all just spend the rest of tonight being happy together?"

"Of course," both brothers quickly agreed. "Kids!" Henry called, bringing the left out children into the conversation. "Hey, would you by any chance happen to know if the front desk lady is usually super grouchy?"

Lucy giggled. "You saw her? I don't know how we get customers with her here!"

"Remember that one time that kid was eating pizza and the lady told him to go away because she said all the sauce on his face would stain her clothes if he came near her?" Brian grinned. "And then the kid asked why she was worried about him when all that lipstick on her face was more likely to get on her clothes than his sauce? Her face got so red! It was hilarious!"

"And there was also that time that that girl made that drawing of herself getting hugged by Freddy," said Joey, barely able to contain his excitement at getting to the punchline. "She was telling her friend that she would rather hug Freddy than that lady because she's way scarier than any bear!" At this point the boy burst into a fit of laughter that only stopped because Foxy's voice box asserted its clear dislike of any sort of strain.

"Well, I guess I'm lucky that she works the day shift and not with me," Henry chuckled. He frowned. "Speaking of shifts and jobs, I almost forgot that it's night five. I'm getting paid today!" His face brightened up for a moment before he realized his mistake. "Oh shoot oh shoot don't tell me…" He put a hand in his pocket and it came out the hole in the bottom. "I had to wear these tonight. Out of all the nights I could have worn them, I just had to pick tonight," he reddened with embarrassment. Getting up and checking the time, he felt about ready to hit his head against the wall in humiliation. "I've got twenty minutes until six," he began thinking up a plan. "I can't just walk around this neighborhood with $120 in my hand, but if I run home, I think I have enough time to change these out for pants with actual pockets."

"Ok," said Timmy, "but you better go quickly. None of us can really tell the manager that you've been here all night, so running in late is probably something you don't want to do."

"Don't I know it," Henry nodded. "I'll be back in a moment."

Jogging as fast as he could, the man took the chain with his key on it off his neck and unlocked his room. There was the bed in one corner, where he'd be headed once he officially came back from work for the day, and a desk with just about all his worldly possessions on the other side of the room. Miscellaneous little odds and ends in the top drawer, clothes in the middle, and of course the stack of pictures in the bottom. He opened the middle drawer and unfolded a pair of pants, checking to make sure they had functioning pockets. His task accomplished, Henry hovered for a moment over the bottom drawer for a moment, finally plucking two photos from the stack. A preschool-age Timmy was hugging his old Fredbear plushy in one and the other had captured a three-year-old Katie beaming in front of their old house. Henry smiled; it would be a pleasant surprise for his siblings if he brought them their old pictures. If he hurried to get back to the pizzeria, he might have a few minutes to show them.

"Hey Henry, shouldn't you be running away from Freddy's, not towards it?"

Henry slowed down. "Mike! I didn't expect to see you up this early," he greeted the other man.

"Oh, I like being out at this time," Mike shrugged. "It's quiet, not too hot, not too many people out to bother you." He ran a hand through his hair. "So, what brings you here? I thought you worked the night shift. Did ya finally quit?"

"No, I just had to run home to get something," the guard replied.

"You should really quit, though. That job's dangerous."

"Actually, it isn't as bad as people make it out to be," shrugged Henry. He smiled to himself, knowing that he was just about the only person alive who knew what was really happening at Freddy's.

"Oh, well, whatever you say." Mike unzipped his jacket and slipped it off. Underneath it, he was wearing a standard purple security guard uniform.

"I didn't know you're a watchman, too," Henry remarked with surprise.

"Well, you know," he shrugged, nonchalant. "I mean, there's an open position for the night shift at Freddy's. You know, after the last guard got murdered."

"What do you mean?" Henry frowned. "The animatronics never killed anybody."

"I know." The man gave an almost sympathetic smile. Henry's startled yelp was easily muffled by Mike's stronger hand. He tried to struggle even after the sharp pain of the stab in his back registered. Mike released him and the injured man staggered forward, falling against the front door of Freddy's. Suzy heard the knock and came up to let the guard in, only to scream when she saw the blood splattered against the pavement, the door, Henry's shirt. The rest of the children were at her side in an instant, staring with pure horror at the sight before them. All that planning, all that waiting for their final showdown with their murderer, all their confidence in getting back at the man who had taken their lives, all of it was nothing in comparison to the absolute terror of standing face to face with the killer and his latest reminder of what he was able to do. Timmy and Katie looked from their brother to the man standing in the parking lot. Timothy recovered first. With a scream of hatred, he pushed open the door and pulled Henry into the safety of the building. Katie relinquished her control of Fredbear and sat down on the ground next to her oldest brother, unable to think of a single thing to say. Timothy shifted his focus to a different person. Paws out and ready to snap a neck, he sprinted out of Freddy's and towards the man who waited, neither retreating nor advancing. Too late he remembered that the parking lot was out of the bear's range of places he could go. All ability to move ceased and the boy was left unable to even look up to see the murderer smash down on his defenseless form.

Nate was already halfway to his friend. The teen felt himself freeze up, not because he was out of the Marionette's range of movement, but because he seeing murder happen all over again. Images flashed through his mind in a ceaseless reel - coughing up blood outside the diner after the knife had come down, Timmy's limp form in Fredbear's bloody jaws, the children all torn up inside the costumes they had been ruthlessly stuffed inside of, the terrified faces of the second group of children who had almost died in the back room and were only spared by the slim luck that Nathaniel had decided to follow them, the manager of the old location as he was being rushed to the hospital with a chunk of his head missing, Henry lying on the floor just inside the diner, Timmy being smashed into scrap metal only a few feet away. Everything blurred into a red, nightmarish mess. He offered little resistance when the man finally completed his work on Fredbear and moved on to him. _I'm supposed to be protecting everyone. I'm supposed to save everyone_ , he thought numbly as he was roughly thrown out of a broken body for the second time. Even as an unseen ghost, Nathaniel stared, motionless, as the murderer smashed up the puppet a little more to make sure he wouldn't come back. He couldn't do anything to face the man who had killed him and his friends. He couldn't save anybody. He had said that he wouldn't leave them to fend for themselves, he had promised it, but he had done nothing. He was just a useless existence, a puppet on broken strings, unable to do a thing to help anybody.

"Nate! Henry's really hurt! Nate! Please Nate, we have to do something!" Nathaniel jerked his head up as Timothy snapped him back to reality. "We've gotta help him!" the younger ghost cried. He pulled Nate to his feet and toward the building, the murderer behind them unmoving, silently daring the other children to come attack him. They didn't accept the challenge. "Get to the office!" Timothy ordered, knowing that the front door would do nothing to stop the killer should he decide to come after them. "Get to the office and lock both doors!" Shocked into action, Brian grabbed Henry's legs and Lucy lifted up his shoulders. Joey kept pace next to the trio, wishing that he could help them without causing more damage with his hook hand. Suzy trailed behind them, still in a daze as she struggled to make sense of how everything could have fallen apart so suddenly and easily.

"I'm sorry you kids have to see me like this," Henry muttered as they set him down on the floor of the office. Lucy slammed one door button while Joey took care of the other. Suzy stood over the injured man, nervously stroking a large, purple ear as she tried to think of a way to help. None of the children wanted to look at the trail of blood that snaked out the door and down the hall. Some carpets were definitely going to have to be replaced. "I'm sorry I failed everybody," he muttered.

The four animatronics looked down sadly. Suddenly, Brian turned to the side. "Nate, Timmy, and Katie say it wasn't your fault," he relayed the message that the three ghosts could not directly voice.

Henry smiled sadly. "I'm still sorry you all have to see me like this," he said. "If the, um, bleeding upsets you, you don't have to look."

"D-do you think Freddy's is going to shut down because of this?" asked Lucy.

"Probably not," the dying guard assured her. "There's a reason why a disowned, single guy like me got hired. No family, nobody to sue in case something happens. As long as nothing gets stolen, they probably won't even close this place up for the day."

"But that isn't fair! Why would they do something like that when they already know that you can't easily get a better job?"

"Life isn't always fair," Henry sighed. "A guy gets away with murder, desperate situations get taken advantage of, it's all just something you have to accept. It's sad, I know, but there isn't really much we can do about it except try to recover as much as possible from whatever life throws at us." The world began to swim and go fuzzy so he closed his eyes.

"Henry?" Brian asked. Henry's eyes fluttered open a bit to show that he was listening. And also, maybe, because he feared that if he didn't try to keep them open now, he wouldn't be able to later. "Henry, Katie says that it's ok if you want to move on." The injured man gave a pained look of confusion. "She says that she didn't mean to drag you into this fight so she wouldn't be upset if you wanted to move on now." He nodded at an invisible conversation partner. "Timmy and Nate say that, too. Nate wants you to know that he isn't going to do his glowey magic thing and bring you back if you don't want to come back. And Timmy says that you should go and we'll all be coming to follow you soon."

From his vantage point on the floor, Henry looked up and blinked a few times. "What to you mean, 'bring back?'"

"Nate has magic. He used it to make all of us ghosts and be able to control the robots," explained Lucy. "Oh, Nate's saying that you should remember what you said to Katie about not being meant to stay here forever. Nobody will be mad if you want to go like you're supposed to."

Eternal peace or staying with family for who knows how long in a run down pizzeria and having to face a murderer. "I'm staying," he declared, quiet but clearly. He gave a pained smile. "If it's your fight, it's my fight, too."

Joey's ears perked up. "Nate wants to know what you want to come back as. You know, for putting your soul into and stuff. He needs you to pick an object in this room."

Henry looked around slowly. There was a desk, some posters, several cobwebs, and the tape recorder. "That isn't much… to work with."

"Nate says he realizes that."

Henry once again assessed the objects on the desk. "I guess if I… have to pick something, I'll go with the fan?" he finally said. "I mean, I can't really do… anything useful with a tape recorder or poster, but maybe I can control how… much power the fan uses or something?"

"Nate says that's ok, but," he frowned slightly, hearing the next part of the ghost's message, "he says he can't do any magic until you're, um…"

"I'll… be dead soon," Henry sighed. There was no stopping the blood from flowing out, draining his life away a little more with every drop he lost. "Before… I go," he remembered, "here." He reached into his pocket and took out the two photos. "Just thought… you might want… to see these…" he smiled, closing his eyes. If he had tried, he would not have been able to open them again.

Timothy and Katie knelt over their brother and the photographs resting beside him. "He kept that picture of me," Timmy said quietly. Tears were in his eyes and Katie was weeping as well.

"I think it's time," Nate said solemnly. The two children didn't move, still lost in their trance of staring at their brother. Gently, Nate picked Katie up and sat her down out of the way. Timmy offered no resistance, either. His work ahead of him, Nathaniel started on his task. The purple glow gathered around the unresponsive man and the little fan, shone brightly for a moment, and then faded in due course. "I'm done," Nate said quietly.

Everybody waited, not wanting to look at the man bleeding on the floor. A minute passed. Nothing happened. Nate began to wonder if he should try again.

"This'll be a sight to meet the employees in the morning." Everybody spun around to see a fuzzy image of Henry coming into focus. "Walking sure is easier when your feet don't try to float off the ground," he stumbled forward as he tried to get to them, his attempt managing to get him to turn upside down and fall through the desk. Katie was instantly at her brother's side, helping him up. "So now we finally talk face to face," he smiled. All seven ghost kids came up to join in the embrace.

The bells chimed six o'clock and the outside was soon filled with shouts of people discovering the two smashed robots. "I guess it's safe to open the doors," remarked Nate. Lucy gratefully pressed the button and they all filed out of the room. When the people finally came into the pizzeria, all the animatronics were in their proper places and the guard was lying dead on the floor of his office. The list of murders that had taken place at Freddy's was one slot longer, and if justice could finally be served to the people on it, the end of the week would see it with one final name.

 **There we go, then. Mike was the murderer all along. Henry is the fan. Why do I come up with these ideas. I really have no idea.**


	21. Chapter 21

The next time 12:00 PM came, a man who claimed to be called Mike Schmidt walked into his new office. No background checks had been performed, though they would have yielded no results anyway. He had been careful nonetheless, but he needn't have worried. The management would have been happy to take anybody this last minute after what had happened to their previous night watchman. To be safe, though, he had entered Freddy's while it was still open and full of people so his past victims couldn't get off the stage mid-show and ambush him on his way to the office. Now that the place was empty, they had their chance to face their greatest enemy. Whether they were ready to take that chance, well, that was a different story.

"He's here! He's in the same building as us!" Joey yelped. "He's coming for us a-and he's here a-and we can't-"

"Joey! We can do this!" Nate assured both the little boy and himself. "We can stop him and we will stop him and we'll all do it together, just like we planned."

Joey nodded quietly. His gaze drifted over to the waiting Foxy. "I-I'm still really afraid, Nate. I want to stop him, but he's just…"

"Think of it like you think of every night here," Nate put an arm around the younger boy and gave him a reassuring smile. "And I'll be right there with you, and so will Timmy and Katie, and Henry'll be in the office draining the power, so getting in will be easier than ever."

"I'm not worried about getting in. I'm worried about what happens after we get in," he muttered. Nate grimaced. It was troubling all of their minds, this murder that they inevitably needed to commit. Nate and Henry and even Timothy wished that they could spare everybody the burden of having to take somebody's life, but Fredbear and the Marionette were in pieces in some scrapyard and there wasn't much a fan mounted on a desk could do. All the Toys had been destroyed long ago and Nate's attempts at trying to control the other children's robots yielded the conclusion that while he could easily possess any of the animatronics, once they were connected to a soul, it became impossible for anybody not bound to the robot to control it. All Nate could do for the children was be with them to offer what little support he could while they committed their first murder.

* * *

"This place is a real dump. I can't see what made you want to stay here, Henry," the man who claimed his name was Mike Schmidt remarked to the recorded voice of his predecessor as he assessed his new office. Invisible to him, the ghost of the person who had held Mike's position the night before was standing on the opposite side of the desk and giving him a death glare. Well, angry stares weren't going to help anything and the night was just beginning. There was a job that needed to be done and everybody knew their role in it. It was time to finish this once and for all.

* * *

"We've walked down this hallway a hundred times before. This isn't any different. It's what we do every night," Lucy assured herself. She was shaking anyway. "It's just another night, the same as every other night here," she shot a quick glance for courage at the ghost girl hovering beside her before reaching the door that slammed down in front of them. Katie parted ways with her friend there, going through the door while the chicken waited outside the office.

"He's still got 88% power left," Katie called, "and it's already 1:00! We have to try harder!"

Lucy nodded and peered in through the window. Mike was flipping through the cameras, a smile on his face as if everything about his situation was entirely under his control. Lucy shifted nervously from one chicken foot to the other, wondering why the killer looked so confident. Maybe he was just bluffing, or maybe he really did have some sort of secret weapon that he was hiding, ready to strike out at them the moment they tried to come in. Maybe he was just playing a game with them, a game where he couldn't lose, and this was just the pre-finale adrenaline rush to give him a few thrills before he destroyed them and finally washed his hands clean of the last bit of evidence of his crimes.

As if he knew what Lucy was thinking, Mike flashed the door light on for a moment and looked directly through the window into the darkness where the animatronic chicken was camped. "You having a good time out there?" he said amiably. "You want to come in? Pretty little girlie, do you want to come in? Or are you going to be a little brat and spy in places you aren't wanted?" he taunted. The smile came back on and he leaned back in his chair, a far off look in his eyes. "I have some beautifully clear memories of what we did together," he reminisced. "You screamed a lot, remember? When I stuck that knife into you, your head jerked back and all that pretty hair of yours got colored a pretty red. And then you started behaving rather nicely. So sweet, so quiet, no complaints. Remember all that?"

Lucy felt the world around her spin as one frightening image after another assaulted her memory. Mike folded his hands and smiled expectantly, as if he was waiting for her to answer his question. The only thing separating him from her was a powered door. No no no she was absolutely NOT going near that monster not after what he had done to her oh what he had done to her the memories so clear coming back—

Mike smiled and opened the door to find exactly what he was expecting to see: nothing. Lucy was halfway across the pizzeria, completely broken down to tears as Timothy, Katie, and Nate tried to comfort her. But the left hallway wasn't so empty. Mike sighed and closed the door on the purple rabbit. Oh well, he had plenty of memories to share.

* * *

5:00. 9% power left. "We can do this! We have to do this! Just focus on me and don't listen to him!" Nate shouted, more to block out Mike's disgusting chit chat than because he was actually frustrated with Brian's continual running away from the doors.

"I-I-I'm s-s-s-sorry N-Nate!" the child covered his bear ears, unsuccessfully trying to not hear what the man in the next room was saying. "I-I-I c-c-c-can't—" He sprinted down the hall, curling up in a tight ball on the floor as soon as he got to the stage. As upset as he was that their little window of time to exact their revenge was dwindling away, Nate, too, was glad to get far away from that vile man in purple. The things he was saying, well, if any of the children had harbored second thoughts about killing the current guard, his clear enjoyment of torturing anything helpless and in pain had erased even the tiniest flicker of feeling that he deserved mercy. It still didn't make having to be the ones to kill him any easier, though.

"P-Please Nate, I d-don't wanna go b-back there. Please don't make me go back there!" pleaded Joey upon seeing Nathaniel enter his pirate-themed room.

"We have less than an hour left before the night is over. You need to go out there and punch the door." Joey whimpered but gave a tiny nod. _I'm pushing everybody too hard_ , Nate grimaced as the fox unsteadily picked himself up and made his way off the stage, the unhidden terror and misery at what he was being forced to do making him resemble a beaten puppy. But there was a task that needed to be completed, and so however much Nathaniel wanted to comfort the little boy and tell him that he didn't have to ever go near that awful man again, the young ghost pushed all those feelings away and hardened his gaze as Joey trudged past him.

* * *

6:00. 1% power. The shift was over, but there was no way the kids were just going to let their murderer leave the office. The doors remained closed on both sides and past victim and killer met each others' eyes through the clouded windows, caught in a deadly waiting game over whether or not the dayshift employees would arrive and force the animatronics back into their proper places before that last sliver of power drained away. Henry was doing his best to make that happen, but he only had one little fan and the six hours of making it turn extra fast had taken their toll on more than just the office's power supply. All were praying that the guard wouldn't start up another story.

The front door of the pizzeria opened. _Just a few more seconds. All we need is a few more seconds._ "What the hell are you doing here?!" screeched the familiar voice of the rude front desk lady. Muttering angrily, she shouted for her coworkers to help her move the animatronics back to their proper places. The children had lost. Accepting defeat, neither Brian nor Lucy nor Suzy nor Joey offered any resistance as they were dragged away from the office. Nate lingered back to watch the door open and Mike come out. The killer amiably accepted the handshakes and greetings of the dayshift workers, as well as a discontented snort from the ever-happy rude front desk lady, before walking out into the freedom of the morning world.

 **I feel bad saying this but the next chapter won't be done until probably the end of the month. School decided to pile on a bunch of projects and they are a priority above writing fanfiction. :( It sucks, I know. Well, I will do what I have to and then I will get back to finishing this story. I am also going to work on a little video about it and I will post it along with the chapter.**


	22. Chapter 22

**Finally I have finished my electromagnetic induction presentation. Joy. Enjoy the chapter. Also, I made a short film about this story and posted it on Youtube. The instructions for how to get to it are at the end of the chapter, but you should probably finish the chapter before you watch it.**

The game had been fun. Mike had enjoyed the thrilling precursor to the final destruction of his former victims. But now the time for teasing and games was over. It was time to finish the work that he had started years ago. The last remnants of those old days would soon be gone, and then he could finally move on to newer blood. Smiling to himself, he watched the last employee leave. The combatants were alone together, just a murderer and his former victims and the task that each of them would not rest until it was accomplished.

Brian made his way down the hall. He was going to block out whatever Mike said to him. He had to stay at the door. He had to make sure the power ran out. He had to get into that office. Counting to ten for courage, the robotic bear turned the corner.

The door didn't close. Henry was alone in the office, facing away from Brian. He turned when he heard the bear's heavy footsteps plod up. "Brian!" he greeted the newcomer. "Mike… he just walked out. I don't know why, but he just opened the door and walked out."

"That's great!" Brian grinned. "There aren't any lockable doors except here in the office, so we can get him now!"

"I guess," Henry wrung his hands, "but isn't it kind of strange that he would leave the safest place in the building?"

"He's stupid, then. Freddy's much stronger than him; I'm sure of that. I'm going to…" He paused to gather his resolve. "I'm going to stop him," he stated, determined. Henry gave an uncertain nod but did not attempt to deter the boy any further.

The murderer was walking around the building, as calm as if he was merely taking an afternoon stroll in the park. He didn't seem to notice that a certain animatronic bear was stalking him in the shadows, gathering up his courage for what he was about to do. Undisturbed, Mike continued on his merry way, Brian following a short distance behind. They were just a boy and his target, one evading the other. But perhaps the target wasn't the only one being hunted. Perhaps he wasn't aimlessly walking around the pizzeria, but instead leading his stalker somewhere. The longer this cat and mouse follow and lead game went on, the more uneasy Brian became. _Just get it over with and run up and attack him_ , he told himself, but every time he got close all he could think of was how it must feel to snap somebody's neck. Would there be a lot of blood? Screaming? Fighting back? He was wishing more and more that he hadn't decided to do this by himself.

Mike was walking straight towards a wall. He would have to turn around soon, and then the face off couldn't be delayed any more. Calm as ever, Mike reached the wall… and stepped right through it.

Brian stopped in surprise. He was accustomed to his friends flying in and out of walls - why, he himself did that several times a day. But Mike wasn't a ghost. How could he have just walked through a wall as if it was no more of an obstacle than the air around him? Confused, Brian relinquished his control of Freddy to follow the murderer.

There was a hole in the wall. Brian's eyes widened. Somebody had smashed through the flimsy fake wall and created an entryway to the sealed off room where Fredbear and the Marionette had so recently resided. The hole hadn't been there yesterday or even at the beginning of this night; it must have been made very recently. Who had made it and why they had decided to knock down a portion of the wall were mysteries. Taking control of Freddy again, Brian was shocked to see that the hole had disappeared. Where there had been an entryway to the sealed off room moments before, there was now only a solid wall. A solid wall, and Mike running through it with a raised crowbar. Brian didn't even have a chance to defend himself before Freddy was destroyed.

All noise seemed to momentarily cease to exist. There was nothing to disturb the little ghost boy as he crumpled to the ground beside the fallen bear, a friend to all children now reduced to a lump of bolts and wires and sheets of metal dented beyond repair. Brian felt as if he had just been killed a second time, as quickly and suddenly and harshly as the first. Freddy was gone, and now Brian had no way to stop his murderer. Blinking slowly, a stream of ghostly tears wet each of his cheeks as the reality of what had just happened settled in.

Suzy knew that she had to go to the office. Everything depended on stopping the killer once and for all. Suzy didn't want him to hurt more people and she wanted to be able to finally leave the pizzeria and move on, but she also didn't want to have to be the one to kill him. This was something she had to do, however, and she knew that she couldn't shy away from it.

The purple rabbit's ears perked up in surprise when the very person who Suzy was searching for strolled by right in front of her. Here he was, outside the safety of the office and seemingly defenseless. There could be no more perfect time to accomplish the task she needed to complete. Closing her eyes and counting to ten, she readied herself for the kill. By the time she opened them, Mike was rounding the corner to the next room. Suzy followed him.

Just a few more steps and she would catch up to him. Stop. She couldn't kill somebody! But she had to. Follow. Just a few more steps. Stop. She couldn't do this. She needed to, though. Follow. Stop. This was the only thing that would make it certain that nobody else would die at this man's hands, the only thing that would allow her and her friends to move on. Follow. Stop. Follow. Stop. And then Mike Schmidt walked through the wall.

Suzy gasped in surprise. How had he-? Alone in the room and no longer concentrating solely on her thoughts and her target, Suzy became aware of another sound. Crying. Examining the room, her gaze fell upon a horrific sight: Brian weeping over a torn-up Freddy. The little boy raised his head and stared numbly at the wall that Mike had disappeared into. And then the killer was back and the crowbar was coming down and then it was over.

Lucy had expected the door to close in her face the moment she stepped past the sight of the hall corner security camera. But the door remained open. This had to be some sort of trick. Mike had to be waiting in the office with something that could hurt her. She wasn't falling for any traps tonight, though, so Lucy hung back and waited in the hallway.

The minutes ticked by. Still the door didn't close. _Maybe he's desperate to save power_ , she tried to reason. _Or maybe he's waiting for me to try to come in so he can slam the door down on top of me._

"Lucy!" The chicken turned to see a slightly uneasy Timothy glide up to eye level with her. "Are you doing alright?" he asked.

"I'm ok. Could you find out what Mike's doing, please?"

Timmy nodded and peeked in. He tilted his head in confusion and entered the office fully. A second later, he came back out. "Mike isn't in there."

"He isn't?"

Timmy shook his head. "I haven't been able to find Suzy or Brian, either. Have you seen them?"

"No, but I can look," she offered.

"Thanks," Timmy smiled gratefully. There was no reason to worry, he was sure. The poor kids were probably hiding in an attempt to avoid being forced to murder the killer guard. There was no reason to be nervous for them. Still, Timothy had been through too much to be so naive as to completely dismiss the thought that nothing was wrong. He wouldn't feel completely ok until his sister's two absent friends were standing in front of him.

Lucy didn't find Brian or Suzy. She found Mike. _He's just walking around?!_ she gasped, confused at why he would leave the safety of the little guard room to wander seemingly aimlessly around the pizzeria. He didn't seem to notice her. That was good. That meant she was safe and had the upper hand in this. She could stop him once and for all right now, and then none of her friends would have to worry about having to kill somebody. She could do it quickly and then it would finally be over. One quick snap and nobody would have to be worried ever again. Why, then, was it so difficult to take that step forward?

Now he had rounded the corner and was out of Lucy's sight. _I can do this. I can do this. It'll be over with soon. I can do this,_ Lucy repeated to herself as she followed her target's footsteps into the next room. Once again, he was so close. Just one step and she could solve all her friends' problems. She could take that step. She _would_ take that step. She would do it in three… two… one… Mike walked through the wall.

 _How…?_ she started, taking a few steps backward in surprise. "He's… coming…" a sob close by caused Lucy to turn. There on the floor only a few feet away were Suzy and Brian. And next to them lay the broken bodies of Bonnie and Freddy. Lucy had only a second to scream before Chica joined her bandmates.

"What happened?" Timmy called as he flew into the room where the scream had come from. He didn't make it past the door. "Oh God…" he whispered. Henry, also summoned by the cry for help, arrived a second later. "How did this happen…?"

Nate and Katie were trying to cheer up Joey. _It isn't something any of us want to do, but we have to kill him if we ever want to be certain that he won't murder anybody else,_ was Nathaniel's argument. Katie was telling him that she and Timmy and Nate and Henry wouldn't cop out of being there with him so he wouldn't feel like he was the only one having to do it. "If we're all together, nobody will feel singled out," she was saying when the other ghosts burst into the room. Nate gasped when he saw the state his friends were in. Timmy's face was paler than ever as he came through the wall, Brian gripping his hand in pure terror. Henry was carrying a weeping Suzy and Lucy was clutching his shirt and stumbling along with a bewildered expression on her face as if she had just emerged from a dream and wasn't quite sure whether or not what she was seeing was real.

"It's Mike," Brian managed to get out. "He disappeared into the wall a-a-and th-then h-h-he…" The little boy collapsed into tears.

"They're destroyed," Timmy went on for him. "Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, all three are absolutely destroyed." Nate paled at his words. Their killer had once again been one step ahead of them and now their situation had become much more dire. The animatronics were their only way of interacting with the physical world. If they were destroyed, there was no way that they could do anything to Mike, not even stop him should he choose to murder someone else right in front of them. If Foxy met the same fate as his friends, justice would never be served and their happy, peaceful ending would be destroyed.

"I d-didn't want to kill him a-and now h-he's k-killed everybody e-else a-all over again," Joey sniffled. "If I h-had j-just been out there with everybody else instead of c-crying in here, we w-wouldn't be in this s-situation." He wiped his tears and runny nose on the sleeve of his shirt. "Now I-I'm the o-only one left so I h-have to stop him." Shakily, the little boy got to his feet and stared intently at the pirate fox. "I have to stop him," he repeated, this time sounding more sure of himself. In a blink, the ghostly child disappeared and Foxy opened his eyes.

"You killed my friends and now you're gonna pay!" The static-filled scream for revenge coupled with the terrifying image of the fox animatronic running at him at full speed should have made anyone faint in terror. Mike, however, just calmly waited for his opponent to get close before the man suddenly sidestepped out of the path of danger. Not expecting that and unable to slow down at his current speed, Joey crashed into the wall. The horrified ghosts watched helplessly while their little friend was brutally dismantled. All they could do was try their best to comfort Joey as their last tiny sliver of hope disappeared. They had lost.

Mike brushed his hands together and kicked the broken scraps of Foxy out of his way to clear a path back to the off camera room. Smiling to himself, he praised himself for a job well done. It had taken a lot of planning and a lot of time, but all those days spent hanging around the pizzeria had been worth it. It had been nearly intolerable at times, pretending to care as he listened to the employees talk about their personal problems and families and useless little hobbies, but all those weeks of getting to know them had produced some valuable information. For instance, there was that shocking piece of news that his favorite old spring rabbit costume was still being kept around and that it was in the building, sealed off in some back room so nobody would have to watch it rot away. And of course his plan would have never worked had he not learned about the special chemical on the seal that made that room invisible to the animatronics. It had been risky to get out of the office and knock down the flimsy fake wall, but that risk had paid off. Now the last bothersome reminders of those two times at Freddy's were gone and he could move on to other things. He'd keep the memories, of course, but the ghosts were gone. He'd shown them who was stronger for the second time and sent them off to the afterworld once and for all. He shouldn't have been haunted by the children he had murdered, but at least that bother was over with now. He had ended the little side story that shouldn't have existed in the first place, and now he could move on to new victims.

It was still the dark hours of the early morning. He should be getting out of this place and be on his way as soon as possible; being at Freddy's when the manager saw his restaurant's iconic robots in pieces was a mess he didn't want to have to deal with. Still, he had a fair amount of time before 6:00. All this hanging around Freddy's had given him a strange, warped sort of attachment to the place. Now certain that no murderous robots would bother him, he felt a sort of need to say goodbye to the building, its ruined characters, and of course his old favorite rabbit who was resting in the room only a broken wall away.

"What are we going to do now?" The question was asked innocently, just a child asking for some direction that might lessen her fear. But there was no answer. All the ghosts could do was quietly watch the winner of the game steal all their hope away once again. Grinning proudly, he stepped into the room he had recently created an entrance to. The old springlock rabbit costume was waiting inside. The kids watched Mike give it an affectionate pat on the ear. "Good times we had, eh?" he said to it. "I'll miss you, old friend." He briefly considered taking it it with him, but that idea was dismissed. Carrying it would be a burden he didn't need need when a speedy escape was being called for, and wearing it was out of the question as well. The springlocks on that thing had to be ancient by now, and the rusty old devices would be sure to dangerously snap shut at even the slightest rapid movement. That suit was now a deathtrap. A springlock deathtrap.

Well, his goodbyes were done. There was no need to stick around any longer. Helplessly, Nate and the other ghosts watched him walk towards the hole in the wall. He was leaving, still free and still evading justice. There was nothing they could do to stop him. It wasn't fair, but that was how it was going to be. _We tried so hard, waited so long. Why does it have to end this way?_ A tear made its way down his cheek, leaving a cool, wet trail in its wake. It was only one of many. _He doesn't even know we're still here. He thinks he's completely rid of us because he won. He did win, but why does he also get to think that he's made us go away forever? Please, if there's even a little bit of justice in the world, please don't let him have the satisfaction that he's made us go away forever._ And somehow, miraculously, Nathaniel's last wish was granted.

Mike stopped. His eyes widened. _No, this can't be real. I… I just destroyed them! They can't be still here!_ But the eight ghostly figures stayed in front of him, blocking off his exit and remaining as a show of proof that he would never be allowed to shake off all of the consequences of his evil acts. "G-Get away from me!" he cried, stepping back.

 _He can see us?_ Had his wish actually come true? That… that wasn't possible. But Mike looked terrified of something, and there wasn't anything else in the room besides them. Testing his theory, Nate took a step towards the panicking man.

"Get the hell away from me!" Mike screamed. Frantically, he waved his arms up and down in a desperate attempt to shoo the ghosts away. They did not waver.

Nate and the other dead children could not have hurt Mike. They were still ghosts, still unable to interact with anything physical. But faced down by his past victims with a blocked exit in front of him and a bare room behind, Mike did not know that. Suddenly very calm, he gave them all a big smile. "You may have me, but I'll never give you the satisfaction of getting to kill me," he grinned crazily, walking up to the rusty, moldy old spring rabbit costume. "I'll never give you that satisfaction." Before their eyes, he began to carefully put the suit on. When he was finally done, the killer stood before the confused group and smiled behind his mask. "I'll never give you the satisfaction of getting to kill me," he repeated one last time. Somehow completely calm and yet totally insane at the same time, Mike raised his arms as if to accept an embrace and jumped. There was a snap and then all of the springlocks activated.

Forcing his head to stay up and watch the ghosts, Mike gave a pained but satisfied smile behind his mask as dozens of little shards of metal were driven into his body. Blood began to soak into the costume, staining parts of it red and dripping down into a puddle on the floor, but still he smiled. He hadn't given anyone the satisfaction of getting to kill him. Nobody would ever be able to reciprocate what he had done to them. He hadn't been killed by anybody other than himself, and that was all he could ask for. Closing his eyes and collapsing onto the pool of his own blood, the murderer died.

As for the eight ghosts, they stared at the bloody costume for a few more moments of silence. "I guess that's all done, then," Timmy finally said. Their greatest enemy was dead, their final task complete.

Slowly, a great calm settled over the room. Everything felt so peaceful and warm and fuzzy and good. "I think we're finally moving on," Nate realized. A gentle light appeared over each of them, calling them away. Suzy and Joey and Brian and Lucy closed their eyes and smiled, beginning to fade. Henry took his brother's and his sister's hands and the three of them started to disappear as well. Nate gave one last, sighing breath before he, too, let go and gave into the light. It was gentle and warm and he was ready to go to it. Giving up the world at last, the spirits were finally at peace.

 **And that's it. The ghosts moved on, the place probably got shut down again, Springtrap…**

 **No. This conclusion is too conclusive. Trying to tack on any more would be ruinous to the ending. This is the end of the story.**

 **However, I did make a short film about it and posted it on Youtube if anybody wants to see it. It has a sort of extended ending that would not fit in well with the tone of this piece. If anybody wants to watch it, you can search "the poetic weirdo" on Youtube and it will be the video titled "Broken Strings the short film." If you cannot get to it that way, then I guess that you could also copy down this link: /watch?v=GB7TJWAIE68 and search for it that way. The ending starts at 1 minute and 53 seconds in.**

 **Anyway, I enjoyed writing it and I hope you liked it. I will probably take a break from this fandom for a little while to write other stories. Have a lovely Mother's Day.**

 **This author's note is not very conclusive. I know. I'm writing this after typing for two hours straight and putting the finishing touches on the video. I am a little bit tired.**


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